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Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?

(martinalderson.com)
507 points martinald | 2 comments | 28 Aug 25 10:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.492s | source
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gitremote ◴[28 Aug 25 13:44 UTC] No.45052117[source]▶
These numbers are off.

> $20/month ChatGPT Pro user: Heavy daily usage but token-limited

ChatGPT Pro is $200/month and Sam Altman already admitted that OpenAI is losing money from Pro subscriptions in January 2025:

"insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro subscriptions!

people use it much more than we expected."

- Sam Altman, January 6, 2025

https://xcancel.com/sama/status/1876104315296968813

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Topfi ◴[28 Aug 25 15:02 UTC] No.45053078[source]▶
That doesn't seem compatible with what he stated more recently:

> We're profitable on inference. If we didn't pay for training, we'd be a very profitable company.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2025/08/15/sam-altman-gpt5-launch-chat...

His possible incentives and the fact OpenAI isn't a public company simply make it hard for us to gauge which of these statements is closer to the truth.

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1. re-thc ◴[28 Aug 25 15:06 UTC] No.45053121[source]▶
> That doesn't seem compatible with what he stated more recently:

Profitable on inference doesn't mean they aren't losing money on pro plans. What's not compatible?

The API requests are likely making more money.

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2. gitremote ◴[28 Aug 25 15:38 UTC] No.45053561[source]▶
Yes, API pricing is usage based, but ChatGPT Pro pricing is a flat rate for a time period.

The question is then whether SaaS companies paying for GPT API pricing are profitable if they charge their users a flat rate for a time period. If their users trigger inference too much, they would also lose money.