how long you amortize the R&D prices over is important too. Do significant discoveries remain relevant for long enough to have enough time to spread the cost out? I'd bet in the current ML market advamces are happening fast enough that they aren't factoring the R&D cost into pricing rn. In fact getting user's to use it is probably giving them a lot of value. Think of apl the data.

There are multiple pathways here.

Company 1 gets a bucket of investment, makes a model, goes belly up. Company 2 buys Company 1's model in a fire sale.

Company 3 uses some open source model that's basically as good as any other and just makes the prettiest wrapper.

Company 4 resells access to other company's models at a discount, similar to companies reselling cellular service.