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Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?

(martinalderson.com)
507 points martinald | 3 comments | 28 Aug 25 10:15 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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. CjHuber ◴[28 Aug 25 15:28 UTC] No.45053429[source]▶
Does anybody really think in this current time that what a CEO says has anything to do with reality and not just with hyping up ala elon recipe
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2. vkou ◴[28 Aug 25 15:42 UTC] No.45053621[source]▶
Specifically, a connected CEO in post-law America.

This sort of thing used to be called fraud, but there's zero chance of criminal prosecution.

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3. CjHuber ◴[28 Aug 25 17:41 UTC] No.45054892[source]▶
Criminal persecution? This scheme has been perfected, like what do you want to persecute. Can you say with certainty that he means it's profitable overall? What if he means it's profitable right now today it is profitable, but not yesterday or in the last week. or what if he meant if you take the mean user its profitable? so much room for interpretation, that's why there is no risk for them