I believe they can't afford anymore to subsidize inference with VC money or that they are trying to get their balance sheet in order for an IPO.

So they could be trying to tighten the thinking budget (to decrease tokens per request) or to lobotomize the model (to have cheaper tokens). I mean, no-one is really sure how much a 200 dollars/month plan actually costs Anthropic, but the consensus is "more than that" and that might be coming to an end.

This explanation falls well in line with the recent outrage about out of quotas error that people were reporting for the cheaper (or free) plans.