Very good point here -- being able to back out does make the capex look less scary.

Really thoughtful and super agree!

To Anthropic's credit they seem to have backtracked for now (re. Windsurf). I think over time it'll more be that foundation models end up building more first party apps, putting them directly in competition with app developers. I don't think API revenues can justify even current day valuations for frontier AI labs so they have to go there.