Yes but they would only need enough to keep the lights on and pay the engineers.
When you're a for-profit company, especially a public one (which I believe they're looking to be soon), you can't just maintain homeostasis. Your investors want growth every quarter.
Conceivably if they stayed non-profit then they could charge just enough to maintain the project, and they wouldn't necessarily have to have ads.
The lights being billions in hardware and plant investment, possibly power generation and operations and maintenance, attracting and retaining top 0.01% of engineers.
In addition if you don't keep up with SOTA +/- 10% you instantly lose all customers. There is zero stickiness.
When you're a for-profit company, especially a public one (which I believe they're looking to be soon), you can't just maintain homeostasis. Your investors want growth every quarter.
Conceivably if they stayed non-profit then they could charge just enough to maintain the project, and they wouldn't necessarily have to have ads.