Doesn’t OpenAI still operate at significant losses by using massive infusions of capital from Microsoft and other investors? If you are giving away half your product, it’s not surprising that they would be undercutting competition. Not a new strategy.

Underprice to avoid or drive out competition and encourage lock-in, then increase prices when you no longer have competitors or your user base is large enough and reliant enough that your attrition is manageable. Then you sell to a bigger company who grinds it up and integrates into their own products. Same as always. Bonus points if you claim to be open source for the free marketing and/or free development/testing in the form of user contributions before switching to a proprietary model.

Shouldn’t we have a standardized corporate strategy bingo card by now?