They have a paid API for Stable Diffusion for one thing. I have been using it.
Operating a Google Cloud VM with a good GPU continuously is expensive for a bootstrapped startup. Sure, they opened themselves up to competition by making it open source. For example, I have also used Replicate quite a bit.
Maybe a lot of their income comes from contracts to fine tune models. For which open source makes things smoother.
Overall it seems doubtful that most of these companies will really make back all of the massive investments. But I certainly appreciate their (apparently subsidized) products.
Operating a Google Cloud VM with a good GPU continuously is expensive for a bootstrapped startup. Sure, they opened themselves up to competition by making it open source. For example, I have also used Replicate quite a bit.
Maybe a lot of their income comes from contracts to fine tune models. For which open source makes things smoother.
Overall it seems doubtful that most of these companies will really make back all of the massive investments. But I certainly appreciate their (apparently subsidized) products.