My best understanding is the following: Given the proprietary model and pricing, they have not seen the adoption they were hoping for for offerings like Wolfra

My best understanding is the following: Given the proprietary model and pricing, they have not seen the adoption they were hoping for for offerings like Wolfram Cloud. As you mentioned, FOSS tooling in the meanwhile has been slowly and steadily becoming good enough, though still far behind the commercial offering from them. The current release announcement however may not be related to the above. Wolfram Language has had natural language capabilities for quite some time now, so the said release seems to be a natural extension. It's a great product. I just hope they are able to lower the prices drastically while still hitting their margins via increased sales.