I think the doomerism was all to get that moat. There's no vendor lockin either, even if you're using the API. You can switch between providers really easily.

Any sensible company, that has the captial, is hedging their bets. My place has plenty of Claude and Copilot licenses, but we also have healthy local projects going on to.

Personally I can use Claude if I want, but I tend to use the self-hosted platform (Qwen and GLM on DGX Sparks before anyone asks). Big Boss told everyone to be sensible with expenditure, so this part of me doing my bit.

Before anyone comments about "is Big Boss also saving money?". Yes he is - the guy comes from a French farming family, he is flies economy out of choice and is well-known in our industry for sacrificing not just his bonus, but also his salary when the company has been in rocky waters over the years.

It still makes sense for very small teams where the burden of maintaining the infra is too high, but if you have 2k engineers it's a no brainer to self host. It's only a matter of time before open weight models can process vision as well.