> I don't know how everyone arrives at that conclusion when the cost of the subscription services is also going up

Of course they will go up, that's the whole idea. The big providers stock on hardware, front-run the hardware market, starve it for products while causing the prices to rise sharply and at that point their services are cheaper because they are selling you the hardware they bought at low prices, the one they bought in bulk, under cheap long term contracts and, in many cases, kept dark for some time.

Result - at the time of high hardware prices in retail, the cloud prices are lower, the latter increase later to make more profits, and the game can continue with the cloud providers always one step ahead of retail in a game of hoarding and scalping.

Most recently, scalping was big during the GPU shortages caused by crypto-mining. Scalpers would buy GPUs in bulk then sell them back to the starved market for a hefty margin.

Cloud providers buying up hardware at scale is basically the same, the only difference is they sell you back the services provided by the hardware, not the actual gear.