Comment by gdcbe
3 hours ago
Maybe in USA in big tech where companies give absurd wages to engineers anyway in some states, that might be acceptable. But to make their ROI they need that (and more) to be spend world wide... no way that is gonna be a budget that is gonna fly in the long term...
Companies love to cut costs, and just like they axe employee numbers at will, they will just as well make that kind of budget quickly dissapear the moment they realize they can go a different path for same or better value... Or simply because share holder short-term value demands it...
The Uber $1,500/engineer/month thing is just the first signal we have had of the price companies may be willing to accept. This price will clearly vary wildly across professions, industries and geographies.
I think it's a poor number to build an "AI is slowing down" narrative around.
The problem is that $1500/engineer/month would be a pretty modest amount of demand for labs. OpenAI/Anthropic are basing their $1T valuations on the explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending. On so many levels of the industry this growth is now priced in. You don't think so?
I don't have a particularly great answer to that question - I'm not enough of a financial analysis to have confidence in an opinion.
I do however think that shouting "look, Uber capped pricing at $1500/engineer/month hence AI is slowing down" is a questionable position to take.
>OpenAI/Anthropic are basing their $1T valuations on the explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending.
No they're not. In reality, actual 'explosive uncapped growth of unlimited agentic token spending' will result in valuations several times more than a 'mere' $1T.