The business model is the total lack of attention to Qwen and Kimi that would happen if their models weren't downloadable. Before releasing the weights, there was basically zero attention paid in the western hemisphere to them, for whatever reason. By releasing the weights, they're relevant in the western world. The business model is to get people in the West to pay to use their platform hosting their AI, that otherwise would never have heard of them. As you said, advertising/marketing, essentially.