[fragmede]

The business model is the total lack of attention to Qwen and Kimi that would happen if their models weren't downloadable. Before releasing the weights, there was basically zero attention paid in the western hemisphere to them, for whatever reason. By releasing the weights, they're relevant in the western world. The business model is to get people in the West to pay to use their platform hosting their AI, that otherwise would never have heard of them. As you said, advertising/marketing, essentially.

[codebje]

Baidu have a lot of services I've never heard of, that are highly successful in China. The lack of interest in expanding into Western audiences doesn't seem to matter there - what's different about inference?

[fragmede]

Looking at Temu and Shien, there's a ton of interest in expanding into western audiences, the difference with inference is that they've found a way to make that happen. Vs, I don't have any use for, eg Baidu's equivalent to Google maps because I have, well, Google maps.