They only struggle to make a profit because of investments into their future, basically: training, aggressive hiring of AI researchers. Anthropic seems to have 90% margin on their API pricing and all enterprise customers have to use this.
And the reason they can do this is because they can create a $1Tr company in 5 years, so they know the investment will pay off.
Why Elon wants his own model so much is a good question with many possible answers, but if Cursor/xAI can produce a truly good model at competitive pricing I don't see why many people won't jump on it.
In many other regions of the world if you ask someone to connect you with a potential investor they demand a success fee. In SV, they do not. Because they're playing a very long iterated game and understand, that even if they don't make a bank themselves, knowing future-successful people will be a great benefit.
Not sure. They were cheaper than DigitalOcean, to the point where 1 DO instance cost would give you 3 on Hetzner, but now they're at parity, and DO seems to have a better product.
I think you tried to narrow down my general statement. What I'm saying is: not all countries and their regulatory bodies are equal. India is a pretty top-down country with quite a protectionist policy.