Whether AI stays pricey or goes cheap depends entirely on who's paying for it — and that's splitting the industry into two camps.

• OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google want to keep their best AI locked behind paid plans, since a free rival that's nearly as good would wreck their ability to charge anyone.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars have been borrowed and spent building AI, and that bet only pays off if companies can eventually charge users for it — which is also propping up today's expensive stock market.
• Nvidia sits on the opposite side: it doesn't sell AI models, it sells the chips that run them, so it actually wants AI to be free and everywhere.
• Nvidia is backing that bet with billions over several years to build and give away open AI models, since more free AI means more demand for its chips.

Outlook: Expect the fight between "AI as a paid product" and "AI as a free chip-selling tool" to keep shaping which models stay locked up and which go open.