I think the author is referring to enterprise customers. You aren't the "customer" in this case; you're the bait.

How do you know that the other models you are referring to aren't subsidized?

Subsidizing makes no sense when there's no - possibility of a - moat. Although it's very possible that China in general subsidizes Chinese labs in some way so they maintain pressure on US labs. But you only have to look at proxies such as OpenRouter to see that the individuals aren't doing any subsidizing on per token costs.