If you have virtually no pricing power and have to drop your $200/mo to $15/mo that's a big deal if your $300bn valuation is implying that not happening, which is what OP's point is about

Idk what you mean by saying this doesn't preclude a monopoly - having your pricing power eroded by competition is kinda one of the key features of what a monopolistic market isn't

Not at all. Monopolies don't imply an anti-rigid price curve. In fact, monopolies almost never have that.

A monopoly means a company has enough leverage to corner and disproportionately own the market. This is entirely possible (and usually the case) even with significant pricing pressure.

I think you're both missing a bigger picture. How many of these services can now be replicated in-house by a single developer? Which part of the service actually costs money once that dev deconstructs the process?

Feels like I won't be paying for anything that isn't real-time. And that any time delay I can introduce in my process will come with massive savings. Picture hiding the loading of loot info behind a treasure chest opening animation in a game, except that time difference means you can pull all the work in-house.

Openrouter.ai seems like a step in the right direction but I'd want to do all their calculations myself as well as factor in local/existing gear in a way they don't.