When it's companies based in the U.S. or EU, like Chamberlain / LiftMaster garage door openers, it's pretty obvious they plan to monetize some cloud services subscription for upgraded features beyond the free basic tier as well as probably selling consumer data.

However, the China-based companies like Bambu Lab (and many others) are more puzzling because meaningful ongoing subscription revenue seems unlikely. Especially in the case of lower-end consumer tech peripherals where the companies usually invest as little as possible in their websites, ongoing feature updates or direct end-user support. Which makes no sense if they really aspire to build long-term subscription revenue. Here's my theory: the Chinese government is quietly compelling them to require cloud connections to China-based data centers as a long-term strategy.

I'm not even saying the companies are some direct arm of the Chinese government or planting nefarious firmware. I think that's too likely to be caught if done at mass scale and it's not even necessary. As long as the cloud servers are in Chinese data centers, the Chinese government can get consumer IP addresses and usage data just from passive packet sniffing and if things turn icy with some foreign countries, they can cause a lot of turmoil simply by selectively blocking packets at the firewall to brick millions of consumer devices.

I know it maybe sounds paranoid and, to be clear, I'm not claiming Bambu Labs specifically is doing this. I actually came up with this theory before I ever heard of Bambu Labs because I have a lot of inexpensive Chinese home automation devices and was surprised by their bizarre insistence on forcing cloud connectivity despite there being no apparent business model incentive and these smaller-scale Shenzen hardware companies showing zero enthusiasm for making a real business out of cloud services. Their cloud implementations are almost invariably the bare minimum possible and seem woefully underfunded. After all, for a low-margin hardware peripheral, every dollar spent running a no-revenue cloud after the sale is pure overhead in a business that live or dies by pennies. It's almost like requiring a cloud connection is an export tax the company is paying just to be left alone to sell their hardware overseas.

For home automation gear, cloud-connectivity is a non-starter in my book. In some cases, it's literally built into our walls, so I only buy devices which will work on a local-only subnet or on which I can install open source firmware like Tasmota or ESPHome.

People just ignored it because, shiny!