There's a lot of optimizations you can do too. Many seem to forget about options like procedural generation or things like fuzzy logic which could cut down cost and yet be more deterministic.
AI is also one of the kinds of businesses that should be self sustainable without funding. If it's not good enough that people would pay right away, it's probably not going to work with a more complex business model.
I would argue VC funding is either mandatory or unlikely though. AI startups move incredibly fast and odds are you'd get killed by another one without funding. The big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are perfectly capable of releasing high quality competitors, and the mid tier ones like Voiceflow and Langchain are also capable of moving quickly.