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No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

martinalderson.com

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Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#331

Post by jeremyjh »

mike_hearn wrote: post #237
jeremyjh wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true but it isn't really important for the argument people are making. What is more important is the marginal cost per token. If each token sold is at a marginal loss, their losses would scale with usage, that simply can't be happening with API pricing. But in general, yes I agree with you and I'm sure they are taking a huge loss on Claude Code.

It looks to me like their losses have scaled with usage, though? They keep predicting their losses will increase even as usage has gone stratospheric.

They are certainly making huge bets that are risky, and so yes on their P&L the L are scaling. That doesn't say anything at all about their marginal inference cost.

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#332

Post by cmb24k »

vidarh wrote: post #203
coldtea wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone who's used Opus knows it's better than the others in a way that isn't captured by the benchmarks. I would describe it as taste. Ah, the "trust me bro" advantage. Couldn't it just be brand identity and familiarity?

I have a project where we've had Opus, Sonnet, Deepseek, Kimi, Qwen create and execute an aggregate total of about 350 plans so far, and the quality difference as measured in plans where the agent failed to complete the tasks on the first run is high enough that it comes out several times higher than Anthropics subscription prices, but probably cheaper than the API prices once we have improved the harness further - a…

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Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#333

Post by rhubarbtree »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #73
rhubarbtree wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is certainly very obvious a lot of the time. I wonder if we revisited the automated slop detection problem we’d be more successful now… it feels like there are a lot more tells and models have become more idiosyncratic.

Tons of companies do this already. It's not like this is a problem that nobody is constantly revisiting...

What’s one company that has revisited this recently and what’s their detection rate on what sample?

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#334

Post by kikimora »

nr378 wrote: post #295
elbasti wrote: post #280

"Any conversation about token costs devolves into an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden implementation of half of generally accepted accounting principles." We have a way of determining if Anthropic is, or has the capability of being profitable, and what the levers to that may be. AI may be world-changing, but the accounting principles behind AI labs are no different than those behind a Pizza Hut. Even if the c…

Dario has made a specific cohort argument here. His numbers (from various interviews) are: you train a model in 2023 for $100M, deploy it, and it earns $200M over its lifetime. Meanwhile you train the 2024 model for $1B, which goes on to earn $2B. Each vintage returns 2x on its training cost. However, the GAAP P&L tells the opposite story. You book $200M revenue in the same year you spend $1B training the next model,…

Why would anyone use 200M model when 1B model is available? The company increase its bet with each iteration increasing risks. It blow up at some point because it cannot guarantee 2B return after 1B investment.

To GAAP point - 200M or 1B or 10B is not a loss but cash converted into an asset. It won’t affect the bottom line at all. Unless the company re-evaluates the asset and say it now cost 1M instead of 200M. This would hit the bottom line.

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#335

Post by weird-eye-issue »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #333
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of companies do this already. It's not like this is a problem that nobody is constantly revisiting...

What’s one company that has revisited this recently and what’s their detection rate on what sample?

Companies like Originality.ai are always updating their models and you could use a simple Google search to answer your questions.

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#337

Post by tom_m »

hirako2000 wrote: post #44

> Qwen 3.5 397B-A17B is a good comparison It is not. It's a terrible comparison. Qwen, deepseek and other Chinese models are known for their 10x or even better efficiency compared to Anthropic's. That's why the difference between open router prices and those official providers isn't that different. Plus who knows what open routed providers do in term quantization. They may be getting 100x better efficiency, thus the…

No they wouldn't. They have tons of funding. They absolutely can and do absorb costs like this. Don't think anyone is ever gonna tell you precise numbers (and it also varies based on workload of course)...but this is literally the business model of AI providers.

They're goal (similar to Uber, DoorDash, Robin Hood, etc.) is to get mass adoption. Their business models only work at this kind of scale.

It's completely impossible to have consumers pay $20-60/mo and be a profitable business without mass adoption where some are not using it as much as others...and, perhaps more importantly, the masses put pressure on their employers to pay for their tooling. This is why pricing does not need to come down.

Quite literally I have engineers spending over $1,000/mo on Opus. That's the goal.

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#338

Post by ffsm8 »

ValentineC wrote: post #329
ffsm8 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in the TOS last time I checked forbidding it's use with Claude code. It's only forbidden to utilize it in the running of the business. So getting Claude code subscriptions for developers should be permissable and not be against anything... However, if you created a rest endpoint to eg run a preconfigured prompt as part of your platform, that'd be against it But I'm neither a lawyer nor work for anthr…

> It's only forbidden to utilize it in the running of the business. Sorry, but could you clarify what this means?

The following paragraph had my clarification to that...

Expressed differently: are you an individual using a official anthropic application interactively? You're fine.

You're using it unattendedly, without an individual holding the reigns? You should probably talk with an lawyer wherever that's permissable.

Again, IANAL nor do I work for anthropic

Re: No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user

#340

Post by aurareturn »

spiderice wrote: post #32
aurareturn wrote: post #27

By the way, one of the charts in the article shows that Opus 4.6 is 10x costlier than Kimi K2.5. I thought there was no moat in AI? Even being 10x costlier, Anthropic still doesn't have enough compute to meet demand. Those "AI has no moat" opinions are going to be so wrong so soon.

Claude Code Max obviously doesn't cost 10x more than Kimi. The article even confirms that you can get $5k worth of computer for $200 with Claude Code Max. So no, Claude would not be getting NEARLY as much usage as it's currently getting if it weren't for the $100/$200 monthly subscription. You're comparing Kimi to the price that most people aren't paying.

API pricing.
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