It is quite likely that the intermediate tokens don’t have ‘semantic import’[0]

There are methods like Habitual Reasoning Distillation or Inverted Reasoning Traces [1] that can help.

While there are reasons to hide the intermediate tokens from a IP protection stand point, there is also a need to hide more effective and efficient generating that doesn’t fit the R1 claims of an aha moment that has been debunked, but is a consumer expectation.

While hidden intermediate tokens do increase the difficulty, it is not a from barrier in itself, especially as they are billed, given information about their length.

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09762v4

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07267