No, it makes sense to secure engagement with the most expensive implementation and then cut costs, this kind of stuff is pervasive in the industry. Besides, we have Brockman on record saying that they do "a lot of quantization"[1][2] so it's not paranoia to suspect other optimization schemes when there's a clear performance drop, which they have also denied a few times.
If you intentionally smear the line between their web app which is chock full of optimizations to even let it function as it does (the web app's max conversation length exceeds the context window) and the API which is versioned and iterated on in the open... it's either a lack of understanding or FUD.
If you intentionally smear the line between their web app which is chock full of optimizations to even let it function as it does (the web app's max conversation length exceeds the context window) and the API which is versioned and iterated on in the open... it's either a lack of understanding or FUD.