Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of various providers on OpenRouter serving very large Chinese models like GLM for a fraction of what OpenAI/Anthropic. Presumably they are making a profit. It’s unlikely that Claude is proportionally that bigger and more expensive to serve so profit margins on inference must be pretty decent
Do we know they are making a profit though? They could be subsidizing use to build market share the same way. They might not have billions, but at the volumes they are selling maybe they’ve got the cash to do it. Even if they are “profitable” how many Uber drivers are “profitable” because they aren’t correctly calculating asset depreciation. Maybe these guys are doing the same thing. Maybe it’s a lot of people who al…
AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
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Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#32I’ve said this before on HN, but there are two things that make me optimistic that we won’t see a big rug pull where price-to-capability ratio skyrockets relative to today: * People keep finding ways of cramming more intelligence into smaller models, meaning that a given hardware spec delivers more model capability over time. I remember not that long ago when cutting edge 70B parameter models could kinda-sorta-someti…
Between: more efficient models - tuned for the task at hand, the ability to run those models in-house, or even at the edges, plus Google and Microsoft are well positioned to stay ambivalent as they’ve got lots of products to sell and whether or not LLMs are part of the portfolio mix is completely dependent on enterprise customer demand.
Anthropic/OpenAI have a number of aggressive downward pressures on their pricing.
Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#33Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#34Brad Gerstner confirmed that tokens aren't being sold at a loss. Whatever the formula, API + Subscription split, the companies are making a profit on net token sale. They maybe running at loss after all the salaries and stock comp, but tokens are in profit now.
Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#35Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#36Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#37> is not a rounding error. It is Who said it was? > Pull out the napkin. This matters. The article wouldn't exist if you didn't think it mattered, just tell us why. > the question is not whether they got a good deal. The question is Who said that was the question? > This Is Not One Company's Problem Who said it was? Stop telling us what thing aren't, just speak like a normal human and convey your own thoughts. It's a…
Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#38We all know every frontier AI lab is heavily subsidizing usage, and so do all of the VCs & CEOs funding them.
Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#39TL;DR to save you time: 1. GenAI companies are making a loss in order to gain adoption and later lock-in 2. ??? 3. They're going to cash-in soon and start milking you now that business critical systems rely on GenAI The "???" denotes a complete failure to offer compelling arguments that link 1 and 3.
Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise
#40Since we can't reliably detect AI generated crap, I think it makes sense to penalize their submission. I say this as a generally pro-AI person.