Are the raspberry pi still produced? They are always out of stock unless for very brief periods on some random stores, which makes me believe some may purchase some old stock once in a while but nothing is getting out of a factory.
The original pis were made to sell some chips that Broadcom had a ton of excess inventory for, and needed to move (hence why the price was so low compared to other SBCs at the time - the main SoCs were free). The modern version is now competing for a chip that's in demand, and can't offer the same price that other people can. They are still being produced since Broadcom doesn't want to cut them off completely, but not nearly as available.
Do you have source for the claims? I doubt especially of free parts. As of rumors I have heard about Broadcom it is extremely "capitalistic" company. If you move a lot of chips price can go down a lot (due the fact that NRE divides to more units). The cost of chip manufacturing alone is not that big - example Apple A14 bionic chip was estimated to cost 17$ to manufacture [0] and it should be waaaaay more expensive than anything in RPI.
