Live data from Hacker News

Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

revolutioninai.com

21–30 of 65 posts

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#21

Story heavily edited by AI about an AI company with an AI product that makes AI videos that is closing so they can spend money on some other AI product. All seasoned with some AI goop images. I hate the future.

You forgot the AI readers and AI commenters.

[flagged]

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#22

But doesn't $15M/day of inference cost imply "demand" from users? If this is the case, it's just a matter of time until costs can be reduced.

Disneyworld has lines longer than the park can manage for decades, do you expect it to just be a matter of time until park management finally figures out how to queue people efficiently enough, or do you think the solution will be once again raising costs for the customer.

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#24
I'm sorry to be this guy but this is an incredibly poor quality article. False structure (thesis/evidence), links to poor quality sources, and a non-examination of the core thesis, which is that it's burning too much money.

$15m/day inference? How was that calculated? Forbes? Did they get it right? Is that a reasonable estimate? Still valid? How was revenue calculated?

IMO most of the votes had to come from some vote ring (35 pts in 35 minutes for a crap article, no way.)

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#26

I would be curious to know if there is actually as much business economic demand for AI video compared to images (logos, product graphics, etc.) or text (blogs, content everywhere, etc.) My impression is that video is too complex to easily fit into an AI pipeline. Either you need something highly specific, like your own product’s UI. Or you need something personable and consistent, like someone talking into his camer…

People are already using it to automate TikTok ad campaigns.

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#27

But doesn't $15M/day of inference cost imply "demand" from users? If this is the case, it's just a matter of time until costs can be reduced.

The actual revenue was quoted at $2.1m .. total. Ever.

It would require multiple order of magnitude cost reductions to make that worthwhile. Maybe another few decades of Moore's law, if we have that left.

This was the Moviepass model of selling $10 bills for $9.

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#28

Story heavily edited by AI about an AI company with an AI product that makes AI videos that is closing so they can spend money on some other AI product. All seasoned with some AI goop images. I hate the future.

vibe coded website too -- I waited 4 seconds for it to load

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#29

I would be curious to know if there is actually as much business economic demand for AI video compared to images (logos, product graphics, etc.) or text (blogs, content everywhere, etc.) My impression is that video is too complex to easily fit into an AI pipeline. Either you need something highly specific, like your own product’s UI. Or you need something personable and consistent, like someone talking into his camer…

[flagged]

Re: Why Sora Failed: $15M/day inference cost vs. $2.1M lifetime revenue

#30

But doesn't $15M/day of inference cost imply "demand" from users? If this is the case, it's just a matter of time until costs can be reduced.

The "matter of time" is getting more and more expensive, not cheaper, at least for next 2 years

Not sure what you're referring to. If you're talking about inference cost for frontier models, that's going up because researchers keep pushing those frontiers, often without considering cost. And while they're subsidized (to gain market share), users have no reason NOT to use the crazy expensive frontier models.

Once the market consolidates, and users get used to the idea of using models that are "good enough" because frontier models are too expensive, there's no reason AI cannot be profitable.

Post reply on HN