True, though paid language models are probably just a blip in history. Free weight language models are only ~12 months behind and have massive resources thanks to Meta.

That profit will be squeezed to zero over the long term if Zuck maintains his current strategy.

> Free weight language models are only ~12 months

That's not true anymore, Meta isn't behind OpenAI

That can change on a dime though, if Zuck decides it's in his financial interest to change course. If Facebook stops spending billions of dollars on open models who is going to step in and fill that gap?

That depends on when Meta stops. The longer Meta keeps releasing free models, the more capabilities are made permanently unprofitable. For example, Llama 3.1 is already good enough for translation or as a writing assistant.

If Meta stopped now, there would still be profit in the market, but if they keep releasing Llamas for the next 5+ years then OpenAI et al will be fighting for scraps. Not everybody needs a model that can prove theorems.