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> 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

• 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
        It's funny because > Take away the huge R&D and they become hugely profitable with a robust ad business like Google Search. Is refuted by the sentence that comes immediately before : > 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. Please explain why have OpenAI been actively not trying to “hugely profitable with a robust ads business” for the past 3 and a half year then? Or at least make a profit that can cover some of there R&D expenses, instead of losing money from their operations? > Just admit you're wrong about inference costs and move on. Unfortunately I'm not. And again, none of your links above says otherwise.
        • deleted 2mo ago
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        • famouswaffles 2mo ago
          >Is refuted by the sentence that comes immediately before No. "They're unprofitable while serving almost everyone for free" does not refute "they could be profitable if those users were monetized with ads." That's the entire distinction. >why have OpenAI been actively not trying to “hugely profitable with a robust ads business” for the past 3 and a half year then? Because "they didn't do it early enough" is not evidence. They may have prioritized growth, product adoption, subscriptions, or simply delayed ads for strategic reasons. >Unfortunately I'm not. And again, none of your links above says otherwise. They show that "LLM inference which is significantly costlier than web search." is unsupported. Imagine dismissing numbers over "but why no ads earlier".