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I don't know where you get that from, but it's pretty easy to prove it wrong: with their daily active users count, OpenAI and Anthropic would have been profitab

by stymaar 2mo ago

I don't know where you get that from, but it's pretty easy to prove it wrong: with their daily active users count, OpenAI and Anthropic would have been profitable for years if that was true. Instead they are bleeding cash like no others and are still trying to secure another round of funding 4 years after becoming among the most heavily used apps in existence. Whatever you think about Altman and Amodei, they aren't clueless idiots and if ads was all they needed they would have done that from the beginning.

famouswaffles 2mo ago
>with their daily active users count, OpenAI and Anthropic would have been profitable for years if that was true. No they wouldn't have. Low cost isn't no cost, R$D is expensive and there are a class of tokenmaxxing users well outside the median (e.g Agentic Coding). > I don't know where you get that from https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measuring-the-environmental-impact-of-ai-inference https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur... https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg...
- stymaar 2mo ago
  > No they wouldn't have. Low cost isn't no cost, R$D is expensive I'm not talking about R&D. > there are a class of tokenmaxxing users well outside the median (e.g Agentic Coding). It wasn't a thing before last year and OpenAI wasn't making profit before that either. > https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur... > https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg... None of these support your claim. Again, when you're here saying that the CEOs of the two biggest AI companies are basically idiots, nobody will take you seriously.
  - famouswaffles 2mo ago
    >I'm not talking about R&D. You said OpenAI and Anthropic would be profitable if the median query was as cheap as I say. I'm telling they wouldn't be because inference isn't the only cost these companies shoulder. R&D/Training is a very big part of costs. That you didn't mention it is irrelevant. R&D is the lion's share of costs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550465 >None of these support your claim. Yeah they do lol. Both those articles place the median query cost around the same as a Google search. >Again, when you're here saying that the CEOs of the two biggest AI companies are basically idiots, nobody will take you seriously. That's not what I'm saying and I don't see what's so hard to understand here.
    - stymaar 2mo ago
      From the very link your HN submission points to: > Research and Development: $19.18 billion. Loss from Operations: $20.92 billion OpenAI isn't profitable even if you discount R&D entirely. Google search on the other hand has had ridiculous margin from the beginning, allowing the company to be highly profitable while financing significant R&D investment. These two businesses models are as different as it can be. If ads were the solutions for profitability these companies would have used ads as their source of income from the very beginning.
      - famouswaffles 2mo ago
        >OpenAI isn't profitable even if you discount R&D entirely. They have a billion weekly active users, almost all free (Not Google search free. Free free) with about ~50M subscriptions. Of course they're not profitable even without R&D. Low cost isn't no cost. Take away the huge R&D and they become hugely profitable with a robust ad business like Google Search. >If ads were the solutions for profitability these companies would have used ads as their source of income from the very beginning. You've said this a couple times and it doesn't make any more sense the more you say it. Just admit you're wrong about inference costs and move on.
        stymaar 2mo ago

by stymaar 2mo ago

famouswaffles 2mo ago

>with their daily active users count, OpenAI and Anthropic would have been profitable for years if that was true. No they wouldn't have. Low cost isn't no cost, R$D is expensive and there are a class of tokenmaxxing users well outside the median (e.g Agentic Coding). > I don't know where you get that from https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measuring-the-environmental-impact-of-ai-inference https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur... https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg...

stymaar 2mo ago
> No they wouldn't have. Low cost isn't no cost, R$D is expensive I'm not talking about R&D. > there are a class of tokenmaxxing users well outside the median (e.g Agentic Coding). It wasn't a thing before last year and OpenAI wasn't making profit before that either. > https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/measur... > https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/how-much-energy-does-chatg... None of these support your claim. Again, when you're here saying that the CEOs of the two biggest AI companies are basically idiots, nobody will take you seriously.
- famouswaffles 2mo ago
  >I'm not talking about R&D. You said OpenAI and Anthropic would be profitable if the median query was as cheap as I say. I'm telling they wouldn't be because inference isn't the only cost these companies shoulder. R&D/Training is a very big part of costs. That you didn't mention it is irrelevant. R&D is the lion's share of costs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550465 >None of these support your claim. Yeah they do lol. Both those articles place the median query cost around the same as a Google search. >Again, when you're here saying that the CEOs of the two biggest AI companies are basically idiots, nobody will take you seriously. That's not what I'm saying and I don't see what's so hard to understand here.
  - stymaar 2mo ago
    From the very link your HN submission points to: > Research and Development: $19.18 billion. Loss from Operations: $20.92 billion OpenAI isn't profitable even if you discount R&D entirely. Google search on the other hand has had ridiculous margin from the beginning, allowing the company to be highly profitable while financing significant R&D investment. These two businesses models are as different as it can be. If ads were the solutions for profitability these companies would have used ads as their source of income from the very beginning.
    - famouswaffles 2mo ago
      >OpenAI isn't profitable even if you discount R&D entirely. They have a billion weekly active users, almost all free (Not Google search free. Free free) with about ~50M subscriptions. Of course they're not profitable even without R&D. Low cost isn't no cost. Take away the huge R&D and they become hugely profitable with a robust ad business like Google Search. >If ads were the solutions for profitability these companies would have used ads as their source of income from the very beginning. You've said this a couple times and it doesn't make any more sense the more you say it. Just admit you're wrong about inference costs and move on.
      - stymaar 2mo ago