Without knowing the numbers it's hard to tell if the business model for these AI providers actually works, and I suspect it probably doesn't at the moment, but selling an oversubscribed product with baked in usage assumptions is a functional business model in a lot of spaces (for varying definitions of functional, I suppose). I'm surprised this is so surprising to people.
There are already many serious concerns about sharing code and information with 3rd parties, and those Chinese open models are dangerously close to destroying their entire value proposition.
Being a common business model and it being functional are two different things. I agree they are prevalent, but they are actively user hostile in nature. You are essentially saying that if people use your product at the advertised limit, then you will punish them. I get why the business does it, but it is an adversarial business model.
The problem is, there's not a clear every-man value like Uber has. The stories I see of people finding value are sparse and seem from the POV of either technosexuals or already strong developer whales leveraging the bootstrapy power .
If AI was seriously providing value, orgs like Microsoft wouldn't be pushing out versions of windows that can't restart.
It clearly is a niche product unlike Uber, but it's definitely being invested in like it is universal product.
It'll be interesting to see what OpenAI and Anthropic will tell us about this when they go public (seems likely late this year--along with SpaceX, possibly)