That might be a problem for the labs (although I don't think it is) but it's not a problem for end-users. There is enough pressure from top labs competing with each other, and even more pressure from open models that should keep prices at a reasonable price point going further.

In order to justify higher prices the SotA needs to have way higher capabilities than the competition (hence justifying the price) and at the same time the competition needs to be way below a certain threshold. Once that threshold becomes "good enough for task x", the higher price doesn't make sense anymore.

While there is some provider retention today, it will be harder to have once everyone offers kinda sorta the same capabilities. Changing an API provider might even be transparent for most users and they wouldn't care.

If you want to have an idea about token prices today you can check the median for serving open models on openrouter or similar platforms. You'll get a "napkin math" estimate for what it costs to serve a model of a certain size today. As long as models don't go oom higher than today's largest models, API pricing seems in line with a modest profit (so it shouldn't be subsidised, and it should drop with tech progress). Another benefit for open models is that once they're released, that capability remains there. The models can't get "worse".