Quality is one aspect, running them is another. If I've already got everything setup with them and they work efficiently, they could also offer open source models and let me pay for usage. Both bursty usage and low constant usage benefit from paying per token and having some shared & large infrastructure to use. I don't want to be running a bunch of h100s, I just want my requests processed.

If they're selling gpt-5 and let me pay for LLaMa or whatever is also out then I'll just use them unless pricing is wildly different.

Not sure at all..

They are siting on gigantic data flywheel of users usages.. (and private access to the best machine that can utilized that data..)

So, IMHO it would be hard to catch with their speed (not in this hype cycle).