Sure but those are still profitable enough without trying to take over the world. Even with free models. Not every new idea is worth 20 trillion dollars. I think most small companies are happy to take home a few billion.
Alibaba was almost measuring profit in the trillions of dollars profit last year. They make the qwen models. Sure their profit is driven by another vertical, but I don't think they are in any danger of having cash flow issues. Supposedly they have already broken even because they had serious business needs for LLMs. And again that vertical is complimented by their investment. It draws in ad revenue, customer support, etc.
I'd love to be wrong but I don't see how Chinese frontier models will keep getting released for free. I'm pretty sure Qwen no longer releases their flagship models to the public.
