> Pricing is kind of irrelevant since they can subsidize this to create that story.
Depends on how much you plan to use the hardware. If it's running near continuously, total cost of ownership is very important. Power costs can quickly dominate TCO.
At the pricing extreme, Google could make their TPUs free to use and charge elsewhere in their cloud. This shows that literal pricing is pretty irrelevant.
AWS yes. Nvidia, not so sure. When you buy a 1080ti you are competing with gamers and miners (and maybe others). There's nothing to subsidize, in fact those cards are selling above MSRP, because they aren't selling an ecosystem but a physical card.