Comment by 93po
6 days ago
they would be break-even if all they did was serve existing models and got rid of everything related to R&D
6 days ago
they would be break-even if all they did was serve existing models and got rid of everything related to R&D
Have they considered replacing their engineers with AI?
An AI lab with no R&D. Truly a hacker news moment
The unspoken context there is that the inference isn't the thing causing the losses.
Inference contributes to their losses. In January 2025, Altman admitted they are losing money on Pro subscriptions, because people are using it more than they expected (sending more inference requests per month than would be offset by the monthly revenue).
https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813
7 replies →
I think you maybe have misunderstood the parent (or maybe I did?). They're saying you can't compare an individual's cost to run a model against OpenAI's cost to run it + R&D. Individuals aren't paying for R&D, and that's where most of the cost is.
Would you have any numbers to back it up ?
they are not the only player so getting rid of R&D would be suicide
It is now 3 years in where I was told AI will replace engineers in 6 month. How come all the AI companies have not replaced engineers?