Comment by daniel_iversen
4 hours ago
Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training?
* For now, when they don't have to compete much against companies like DeepSeek who supplies inference at 1/10th of the cost
> Doesn't inference have very good profit margins* but all the losses come from training?
There is no source for this. Amodei just pulled a hypothetical explicitly distanced from Anthropic out of his ass and kickstarted some citogenesis when people half-remembered that number and started quoting it as truth.
The only material claim of Anthropic is that they would "turn an operating profit of $559 million in the June quarter ... The company might not remain profitable for the full year as it plans spending increases due to its vast computing needs." with an explicit disclaimer that: "It is unclear what accounting methods Anthropic has used to book revenue and costs, as the company isn’t yet required to follow the financial-reporting requirements of a public company."
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-...
This is the exact same quarter where xAI is giving them deeply discounted compute, as such the numbers cannot be projected out to the later quarters once Anthropic has to actually pay xAI for the compute they use.
Finally, there's the reality that were the revenue numbers any good, Anthropic would just publish them and leapfrog OpenAI. That they do not provide clear GAAP numbers suggests the numbers are bad.