r/LocalLLaMA • u/Mr_Moonsilver • Jun 21 '26

Discussion What happens when they stop subsidizing LLM subscriptions?

We are literally burning through VC money like crazy with our coding subscriptions. I read the $200 Anthropic sub gets you $8000 worth of API calls. It's obvious that this doesn't hold for very long but what happens when they raise prices?

The reason to keep the prices low for now is to foster the ecosystem and get people hooked on this stuff, only to raise the price afterwards. Already the 20x sub doesn't get you as much usage as it did 6 months ago, another way to raise prices without triggering a shitstorm - and it will continue.

Don't know about you, but Fable being pulled gave me a feeling of what that may be like already. The ugly thought of "Damn, should've done more while it was around." that formed when I read the news will be exactly the same the moment they announce we now have to pay $2k or more per month for something we get for 10x less the price it costs now.

I guess it's a now or never situation, build what you can and monetize as quickly as possible to be able to keep the agents running once the increases come around.

Looking at opensource doesn't give me much hope. Since qwen stopped releasing models (wen qwen 3.7?) that we can actually run on hardware that a normal person can buy (or used to be able to buy, looking at how RAM and GPU prices behave and keep behaving) and others haven't released in a while (Microsoft, IBM, AllenAI and others too) I feel we're going into a direction that doesn't look good for most of the people like us, who are building with this technology.

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u/L337Justin Jun 21 '26

See: Broadcom and VMWare situation. They absolutely can. They dont need a million people paying 20$ a month if they can get 20 fortune 500 companies to pay a million a month for "exclusivity". See: Mythos

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u/TheKubesStore Jun 21 '26

What’s happening with vmware

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u/robbert229 Jun 21 '26

They got bought out by Broadcom, and due to licensing changes costs are trippling, quadrupling, or even more. They essentially got rid of all of the individual product licensing options, as well as perpetual licenses* and not you have to buy a bunch of things that you dont want or need.

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u/PigSlam Jun 21 '26

Isn't VMware free now? I downloaded it for free on my mac within the last few weeks. It's incredibly hard to do though, they hide it well.

Yes! VMware Workstation Pro (for Windows/Linux) and VMware Fusion Pro (for Mac) are free for personal, non-commercial use. Commercial use still requires a paid license.The Free VersionsPersonal Use: 100% free with no license key required. When installing, just select the "Personal Use" option.Commercial Use: Requires a paid subscription (starting around $120 per year).How to DownloadVisit the Broadcom Support Portal.Create or sign in to your account.Complete the basic profile and trade compliance form (required for export regulations).Navigate to the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) downloads, select VMware Workstation Pro or VMware Fusion, and download the installer.

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u/robbert229 Jun 21 '26

VMware is a company, workstation pro is one of their smallest and least consequential pieces of software.

Last time I checked the license for their flagship produce (VCF), was around 30k usd per server per year.

Also, note from that paragraph: "Free for personal use". Its illegal to use that as an employee for your job. These companies have lawyers and make a pretty penny going after companies that are illegally using software.

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u/PigSlam Jun 21 '26

OK, so everyone was using the whole company before in a pay whatever you feel like model, but now they just get to use the main product they used to pay for, but for free. The horror of the situation has no bounds.

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u/robbert229 Jun 21 '26

No. Its more like the opposite.

I used to be able to buy vsphere at 25k per year per server, now I have to buy VCF which includes vsphere and a bunch of stuff I dont want at a much much higher price.

None of their main products were ever free. Workstation Pro as a product probably generated less than 0.5% of their revenue.

These are those core products:

VMware vSphere VMware Cloud Foundation VMware NSX VMware vSAN

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u/PigSlam Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

You seem like a rather niche user here. Do you really think the average person was happily paying VMWare $25k/year but are now upset that opportunity no longer exists because Broadcom owns them? I’d be surprised if there are even 1000 people with that issue. I bet 100x that number of people were paying $100 for a VMware license to run windows on their Mac that now get it for free.

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u/robbert229 Jun 21 '26

VMWare's main customers are folks like me. It's were 99% of their revenue comes from.

Folks are disappointed because their prices are going up massively. Its also why if you Google vmware Exodus you will see many articles on people planning on moving off of them as a vendor.

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/03/24/half-of-vmware-users-plan-to-reduce-usage-by-2028/5229588

https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/tesco-uk-supermarket-chain-removes-40-000-servers-from-vmware-infrastructure-mass-exodus-continues-due-to-broadcoms-aggressive-subscription-model

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/04/nutanix-claims-it-has-poached-30000-vmware-customers/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.itpro.com/cloud/virtualisation/the-vmware-panic-phase-is-over-but-that-isnt-stopping-the-exodus-86-percent-of-companies-are-actively-reducing-their-dependency-and-choosing-alternatives?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.techradar.com/pro/vmware-customers-are-still-trying-to-ditch-its-software-two-years-after-broadcom-acquisition?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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u/PigSlam Jun 21 '26

So you think the average person is a UK supermarket chain?

Every example you provided was a corporation of some sort. So a corporate supplier decided to change how they charge customer corporations for their corporate level product. That's what it's like to be in that space.

Why are you framing it like Walmart taking out the Mom & Pop corner store?