Not sure what you're trying to get at here. Charlie Marsh has literally said this himself; see e.g. this post he made last September:
> "An example of what this might look like (we may not do this, but it's helpful to have a concrete example of the strategy) would be something like an enterprise-focused private package registry."
Astral doesn't really have a business model yet, it has potential business models.
The issue is that there isn't a clean business model that will produce the kind of profits that will satisfy their VCs - not that there isn't any business model that will help support a business like theirs.
Private package management would probably work fine if they hadn't taken VC money.
I would have agreed with you until I learned that Conda somehow makes $150m in revenue a year. They have fewer users than Astral too (or if not they will do very soon).
> "An example of what this might look like (we may not do this, but it's helpful to have a concrete example of the strategy) would be something like an enterprise-focused private package registry."
https://hachyderm.io/@charliermarsh/113103605702842937
Astral has been very transparent about their business model.