Comment by PaulRobinson
4 hours ago
Sure, but what you're not taking into account is that $1500/month is subsidised by VC money.
If Uber were asked to pay full price, they'd either get the same value for significantly more outlay, or keep their outlay capped but get significantly fewer tokens.
This would, I'm sure you'd agree, change the ROI outcome.
Zitron is arguing that if we all pay the true cost once the subsidies go, we'll either stop paying for the value we get today, or we'll find AI to be less useful than we do today, and those businesses won't be sustainable, and then <pop> goes the bubble.
I enjoy keeping an eye on https://isaiprofitable.com to see just where we are overall. Interesting reading if you like to think about such things.
I think the prices Uber et al are paying - the list prices for the API - pay out a healthy margin to the AI labs.
They're not profitable against the R&D spend, but they could be profitable if the AI companies attract more paying customers while keeping their model training costs static.
The growth in Anthropic's revenue over the past 12 months has been astonishing. There's real market demand for what they are selling.