I'd say that is/was their long game, but it's still very much in hype phase so there's a lot of people intensively using these models, and I don't think it's anywhere near cost efficient right now. Maybe in the long run when people get bored with it, but on the other hand people are becoming dependent on it for everyday things.

We've already seen price hikes / token limits earlier this year, with suddenly some people running out of budget on the first day of the month. This will likely keep going for a while.

On the other hand, costs will drop too - open models and specialized hardware, as the article notes. The long question will be whether the companies will get a return on their invested billions. I don't think they will, not with the amount of competition they're facing, and I don't think any one company or model (series) has a monopoly yet. Popularity sure, but I'm confident a competitor may appear tomorrow and people will switch.