Get testers to collect feedback without paying for hosting costs. To kill off competition with closed off models that are behind services.

Some countries have rather specific reasons e.g. China. Most high end AI tooling e.g. Nvidia GPUs are "banned" or capped. They're low on capacity. So they train their models with Nvidia GPUs outside of their country (i.e. avoid import ban), publish the model and then fine tune it back home for their market.