I pay OpenAI and Anthropic directly for API access that is hooked into a plugin on my IDE. I also use Chatbox, an app that lets me chat with them, using the API directly.

No idea if they are making money on my use of their services, they haven't made that information public.

If the price was higher I would still pay it. Given that they keep offering lower prices on newer models, I am inclined to say that they are making money on the incremental use of the models (which is basically the cost of renting a GPU). No idea if they are making enough to recoup the cost of research.