Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?

From https://www.theverge.com/command-line-newsletter/759897/sam-..., Sam Altman said:

> “If we didn’t pay for training, we’d be a very profitable company.”

Exactly. All of the claims that OpenAI is losing money on every request are wrong. OpenAI hasn’t even unlocked all of their possible revenue opportunities from the free tier such as ads (like Google search), affiliate links, and other services.

There’s also a lot of comments in this thread who want LLM companies to fail for different reasons, so they’re projecting that wish on to imagined unit economics.

I’m having flashbacks to all of the conversations about Uber and claims that it was going to collapse as soon as the investment money ran out. Then Uber gradually transitioned to profitability and the critics moved to using the same shtick on AI companies.

As someone who has been taking the largest part of Google and facebooks ad wallet share away, Let me tell you something.

Advertising is now a very very locked in market and will take over a decade to shift even a significant minority it into OpenAIs hands. This is not likely the first or even second monetization strategy imo.

But I’m happy to be wrong.

> As someone who has been taking the largest part of Google and facebooks ad wallet share away

Can you elaborate? You’ve sparked my curiosity.

There are two companies gaining significant wallet share: Amazon and TikTok. Of those only one is taking a significant early share of both Google and Facebook.

OK, but you are a person, not a company. "You" are not taking the share away.

"I'm digging a trench"

"No you're not, WE are digging a trench!"

Yes fine, but "I am as well".

Sheesh. Also I, personally, do and lead the work of taking the wallet share. So I will stick with "I" and would accept any of my team saying the same.