The model providers seem to be in a meta-stable equilibrium.

None of them have any differential pricing power, since the models are practically commodity.

But they do all have a shared interest in the inference cost not dropping to zero, to recoup their capital investment in training.

This is not too dissimilar from the Unix Wars.

There were a small number of extremely expensive Unix options, in a stable equilibrium.

Then Linux showed up, a high-quality free option, and it totally destroyed that equilibrium.