When Blackmagic&s CEO Grant Petty spoke about potentially future paid updates for DaVinci Resolve during the large, live-streamed product presentation at NAB, we weren&t the only ones who pricked up our ears. The rather vague statement understandably caused discussions among Resolve users, so we asked Blackmagic again at the trade show and received more detailed information.
Accordingly - and this should please many Resolve users - there will always be a free version of DaVinci Resolve in the future, and a subscription model is expressly not planned.
However, in the course of its efforts to expand AI functionalities, Blackmagic sees itself forced to consider paid Resolve upgrades. So far, after purchasing a Resolve Studio license, all updates were provided free of charge, which, by the way, is not a matter of course. The development of computationally intensive AI features, especially generative AI tools, now seems to be significantly more expensive for Blackmagic than previous program extensions. In the new DaVinci Resolve version 20, 
almost 10 new or improved AI functions have been added, including AI IntelliScript, an AI Beat Detector as well as AI Magic Mask v2 and AI Depth Map v2.
Since the Neural Engine, on which the AI functions are based, has so far only been included in the Studio version, practically all AI tools are only available there. This means that any paid AI upgrades would probably only affect the Studio version anyway.
;)