I think keeping models around for a defined period of time is fine, but fracturing your model offerings like that (keeping around multiple versions of the same model) is very hard to do economically. The economics of the AI ecosystem are dominated by queueing theory constraints that make it extremely cheap to serve predictable traffic loads, and extremely expensive to serve unpredictable loads, and any time you split your offerings like that, you make both less predictable and therefore more expensive to serve both versions.

If I were paying anthropic prices, I'd expect it, but Deepseek is a super scrappy upstart in comparison and intentionally arbitraging on price. I would never expect them to do that.