If they've already built themselves a loyal customer base (which is usually the point of fighting a price war) and the customers are happy with the technology they have, then if funding is tight and turning a profit is more important why wouldn't they pivot to optimizing inference by stopping further training, freezing the model versions, burning the weights into silicon and building better caching strategies and improving harnesses and tools that lower their cost and increase their margin?

If all they do is hike prices then they'll lose customers to competitors who don't or who find a way to serve a similar model cheaper.

The demand isn't going to go away purely through higher prices. Once people know something is possible they will demand it whether supply is constrained or not. That's a huge bounty for anyone who can figure out how to service that demand.