The End of Subsidies Has Begun - Kind of

OpenAI just announced that they are slashing the usage of the $200/mo subscription in half! Surely this is the beginning of the end of subsidies that the Chicken Littles have been declaring in their endless quest that SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, the world is going to stop using generative AI. Enjoying the amazing value that $200 has been giving you from OpenAI and Anthropic? Well -- it's a terrible thing, a TERRIBLE thing Chicken Little says. Those are subsidized plans and subsidies can't last forever. You are going to get hooked on $200 subs and then have the rug pulled. The RUG PULLED Chicken Little says with his scary voice. And yesterday OpenAI confirmed that Chicken Little was right all along. And you know it's just a short hop from there to the end of generative AI - that Chicken Little desparately hopes happens. Calm down Chicken Little - the sky may fall some day - but today is not that day. You see, OpenAI released Gpt 6.1 Sol and it's their smartest model to date for most things and it's CHEAP. 1/10th to 1/77th the price of comparitive models from Anthropic. This isn't Luna, OpenAI's cheap tier model, this is their flagship normal people model (Astra sits above it). Now one can argue that Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 are better at somethings. Yep. I'll still be subscribing to both OpenAI and Anthropic. But there is no argument, that Gpt 6.1 Sol is amazingly cheap while being fronttier intelligent. So while the $200 sub usage amount is changed from 20x to 10x, the model you want to use most, is FAR cheaper than the one released just a week ago. The net is - I'll get more work done for that $200 than I used to get. While using a model smarter than I've had the chance to use for more than explorations (Astra is amazing, but very expensive). And yes, it's weird that OpenAI released Gpt-6 Sol just last week. Why do that and this much better and more efficient model only one week later? Could it be that Opus 5.5 romping all over them on benchmarks have something to do with it? I think so. So, dear Chicken Little's - this week we have models that are smarter and less expensive from OpenAI, Anthropic and Grok. The sky is firmly fixed in the heavens. So far. PS: if you are an Astra user, and this Sol 6.1 does not, in fact, replace your need for Astra - then yes, your $200 sub is only worth $7k in retail api instead of $14k. And if you built a business who's viability was Astra subsidized at the rate before - then Chicken Little was right about you. So sorry. PPS: if a business actually needs Astra - the comparison isn't "how much before and after the change in the $200 tier". It's the cost of a human specialists labor vs Astra. Pretty sure they are going to continue choosing Astra and be grateful.