[drillsteps5]

Open weights models are cheap in the context of the article (when you run inference in the cloud) because they are free. When I pay for inference for running DeepSeek open weights model I only pay the inference service provider for compute/memory/storage/network throughput. The model itself is free, the developer isn't getting a dime.

Developing these things is NOT free, there's a lot of labor, hardware, compute/memory/storage/network that goes into that. Who's paying for all this? Chinese govt? Developers themselves? What's the revenue model here?

I absolutely LOVE ability to either run them locally or access inference providers on the cheap, but having a hard time understanding the financial side of this.