I disagree. I think it does make sense the way it was described; top models for governments or industrial players with deep pockets, and "normal" models for the general public. None of the big 5 defense contractors sells directly to the wider public.

In fact, I'd assume this direction has been widely discussed and considered at Anthropic. I think Fable's release was an experiment to test this.

The biggest risks though are China and Moore's law. In the short term, if you don't offer a competitive model as the market grows, you fall behind in marketshare. Anthropic's edge is that it's offering is still better than Chinese offerings. If they offer anything less than that, something not better but just comparable for example, they lose on price. In the long term, as computing capacity continues to increase, local models potentially pose the same challenge.

So there's plenty of pressure for Anthropic to keep widely offering the best model they can.