>The biggest problem is all the tech companies making consumer hardware completely unaffordable, and I don't think this is accidental. Look at Micron's profits and share price lately...

You realize "tech companies" isn't a monolith? Micron charging inflated prices doesn't magically benefit OpenAI. The "high prices keep out competitors" theory doesn't make much sense either. It's like saying Dennys benefits from higher egg prices because it makes cooking eggs at home more expensive.

You got it wrong. Use appliances instead of eggs. If getting an oven gets more expensive I rather keep going to Dennys.

It’s classic capex vs opex. I’d keep paying my openai subscription instead of dropping $3k to run a subpar model. If the thing costs $1k I would consider it.

openai etc are going to have a higher utilisation of the hardware so can afford it more than small companies/people. Efficient resource use matters more when they're expensive.