The $0.14-per-million-token Question
The reflexive explanation is "they're dumping to gain market share." That's wrong — or at least, it's only 10% of the story. The other 90% is structural. These models are genuinely cheaper to build, cheaper to run, and cheaper to serve. Here's exactly why.
Architecture: MoE Means You Only Pay for What You Use
The single biggest factor isn't labor costs or subsidies. It's Mixture-of-Experts architecture, and it's a genuine technical advantage that Western labs are still catching up on.
How MoE Works (the 60-second version)
