[Open-Source Models Force AI Giants into Subsidy Wars, OpenAI and Anthropic Face High-Valuation Pressure] According to monitoring by Beating, open-weight models are rewriting the pricing rules of the AI market. Companies are no longer assigning all tasks to OpenAI and Anthropic but are instead using cheaper models for routine tasks, reserving top-tier models for more complex problems. Customers are also becoming increasingly less loyal to model providers. This year, the customer service platform Pylon received approximately $1.6 million worth of free tokens from a single provider, along with several months of unlimited usage. Model companies are relying on subsidies to retain clients. Chinese models like Kimi and GLM are also beginning to penetrate U.S. enterprises. Over the past two weeks, about half of Hex's clients have integrated Kimi into their workflows. Harvey, on the other hand, uses GLM-5.2 to handle tasks first, only calling on Anthropic's Fable 5 for more challenging problems. The high valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic rest on two assumptions: that enterprises will heavily utilize top-tier models and will be willing to pay high prices over the long term. Open-weight models are simultaneously undermining both assumptions. While the two companies may continue to own the most powerful models, they might only secure the most complex and least frequent tasks. As more token consumption shifts toward cheaper models, their revenue growth and pricing power will face pressure, forcing them to continue offering free credits and subsidies to attract clients. The price war triggered by open-weight models is impacting the high valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic ahead of their potential IPOs. [Original Article Link]