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The original article linked in the opening has more context https://vectoral.com/blog/token-relay-market https://vectoral.com/blog/token-relay-market People tr
by Aurornis 2mo ago
The original article linked in the opening has more context https://vectoral.com/blog/token-relay-market https://vectoral.com/blog/token-relay-market
People trading their unused credits feels more genuine, although still in violation of the agreements. The person who got into YC Startup School who was trying to resell the $2500 of credits was interesting. It wouldn’t be that hard for OpenAI to identify the IP addresses of the relays and start flagging accounts, tracing it back to the source. Risking burning your bridges with YC for a relatively small profit is a questionable decision.
The original article showed discounts ranging all the way up to 98%. At those levels it’s obviously not people reselling anything. It’s either sourced from stolen API keys, bought with stolen credit cards, or acquired through automated sign up of trial accounts if you’re actually getting the API you request.
I would expect a lot of them are reselling a different API. Sign up for Anthropic tokens and get Deepseek responses instead.
- judge2020 2mo agoAnother part of the discount is that Claude Max 20x is $200 but gives usage equivalent to thousands of dollars worth of API-based token spend. But also, resellers only need to make an overall profit including kickbacks from the companies purchasing token history for distillation.
- ffsm8 2mo agoIt's also unclear wherever the subscription price is the real cost, or the API. I suspect it's closer to the sub price and anthropic is just milking their API users, but that's something you'd only know from the inside
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2mo agoOpen weight SOTA models are not greatly cheaper than Anthropic and providers don't have to cover training capex.
- ElFitz 2mo ago> and providers don't have to cover training capex. How so?
- sethaurus 2mo agoWith an open-weights model, anyone with the hardware to run the model can act as a provider. The median provider pays nothing for the model, so they do not contribute to the cost of training it.
- ElFitz 2mo agoAh! Makes sense. Thanks!
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2mo agoProviders like Fireworks offer inference, they're not training their own models. Yet training is the most expensive part, inference is easy profit.
- ElFitz 2mo agoAnd even the ones who trained it can’t afford to offer it at a price covering their training capex, since any good open-source model will see other providers selling inference without any training expenses to cover. Didn’t see it, but it’s obvious in retrospect. Thanks!
- bonoboTP 2mo agoCosts also have to include the amortized training costs. But the API price is likely simply regular supply and demand, charging as much as the market will pay. Corporations are dropping insane amounts because it's still peanuts for many industries. Software has just been ridiculously cheap before AI. So high prices are still low for companies if it eases some bottlenecks.
- HWR_14 2mo agoThe costs only have to include amortized training costs if you are trying to be profitable overall. Having positive unit economics and VC subsidized fixed costs is pretty standard.
- Geezus_42 2mo agoWhat happens when the VCs decide to stop dumping more money onto the fire?
- HWR_14 2mo agoPositive unit economics means that inference as a business continues regardless. The VC's no longer dumping money in means no more training new models.
- bonoboTP 2mo agoNot if there is competition who does train newer and better models.
- jfaat 2mo agoBy lighting VC (public soon) money on fire...
- byzantinegene 2mo agothis would never work if the core business model requires your flagship product to be best-in-class.
- drawnwren 2mo agoGenerally speaking, B2B prices are rarely supply-and-demand priced in the usual sense. YC has advised startups in the past that it's easier to sell a single $100k customer than 100 $1k customers. It would also be relatively surprising to learn that i.e. the Chinese providers are OOMs better at inference than OAI/Anthropic (like their prices would imply if they were in a perfectly competitive market).
- bonoboTP 2mo agoChinese prices aren't really OOM cheaper. Deepseek recently did a big price hike too.
- drawnwren 2mo agoFair, I hadn't looked recently. It looks like currently kimi is either 1/2 or 1/4 Ant pricing depending on whether you think Opus 5 is usable or not. (Deepseek is still an OOM though)
- ronsor 2mo agoThe one thing I trust is that Chinese prices aren't overinflated. They're almost certainly closer to the actual cost of inference + training amortization than what Western labs are offering. DeepSeek's price hike is mostly driven by increased demand, for example. It's not about losses so much as they don't have enough infrastructure and need to reduce demand somehow.
- dragonwriter 2mo ago“It's also unclear wherever the subscription price is the real cost, or the API.” There is no “real cost” other than the cost actually charged.
- selcuka 2mo ago> It's also unclear wherever the subscription price is the real cost, or the API. Define cost: Is it only the inference cost to the provider, or do you also consider training costs as well? If it's the latter, how would you estimate the number of total tokens that will be sold for the current model (so that we can calculate marginal cost)?
- doctorpangloss 2mo ago> Another part of the discount is that Claude Max 20x is $200 but gives usage equivalent to thousands of dollars worth of API-based token spend. this is all it is. it's not complicated.
- ai_prodman_at 2mo agoWith Claude Max, you have restricted token consumption per timespan (rolling time window measures token consumption in last 5 hrs, will suspend your account if you are above usage). API doesn't have that limitation unless you run out of credit.
- diego_sandoval 2mo agoExcept for the cases of credit card fraud, I don't see what's morally wrong with it, for it to be called "fraud". It's just reselling. Maybe people are starting to copy Anthropic's rhetoric of "everything that inconveniences me is fraud (e.g. distillation). Everything that benefits me is legit."
- joshuacc 2mo agoLying to someone to deceive them into providing you with an economic benefit that they otherwise wouldn’t is textbook fraud.
- Aurornis 2mo ago> Except for the cases of credit card fraud, I don't see what's morally wrong with it, for it to be called "fraud". Signing up to the startup credit programs with fake startups is fraud. In general, performing a misrepresentation to deceive another party for financial gain is fraud. So there are plenty of ways to define this as fraud
- diego_sandoval 2mo agoIf you sign a contract on paper, I 100% agree. It's fraud. Signing up for it on a website and checking a box that says "I agree to the terms of service", I don't think carries the same weight. But maybe that's just me.
- wodenokoto 2mo agoSome sellers sell the token twice. Once to the buyer and once more as training data to labs building models.
- danny_codes 2mo ago> Risking burning your bridges with YC Why would violating TOS for a single company matter to YC? That kind if initiative is highly valued at YC. The more rules you break the better!