I think they are panicking. The IPO is just around the corner and GLM 5.3 release was timed just so to take the wind out of their sails.

Regardless of the reasons, this isn't a rational response, it effectively cedes the stage to Asian models that we know now are (1) good enough and (2) open weights. Of course then there is still the risk of what exactly they were trained on but that's a lesser problem compared to being at the mercy of Dario & Sam gatekeeping what you can and can not do.

They never saw the open weights models as serious competition until recently.