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Are OpenAI and Anthropic losing money on inference?

(martinalderson.com)
507 points martinald | 4 comments | 28 Aug 25 10:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.925s | source
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_sword ◴[28 Aug 25 17:53 UTC] No.45055003[source]▶
I've done the modeling on this a few times and I always get to a place where inference can run at 50%+ gross margins, depending mostly on GPU depreciation and how good the host is at optimizing utilization. The challenge for the margins is whether or not you consider model training costs as part of the calculation. If model training isn't capitalized + amortized, margins are great. If they are amortized and need to be considered... yikes
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lawlessone ◴[28 Aug 25 17:56 UTC] No.45055030[source]▶
Does that include legal fights and potential payouts to artists and writers whose work was used without permission?

Can anyone explain why it's not allowed to compensate the creators of the data?

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datavirtue[dead post] ◴[28 Aug 25 18:16 UTC] No.45055241[source]▶
[flagged]
lawlessone ◴[28 Aug 25 18:19 UTC] No.45055274[source]▶
why not?
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1. tick_tock_tick ◴[28 Aug 25 19:14 UTC] No.45055890[source]▶
Because the law as it stands says they aren't and Congress may make no ex post facto law.
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2. lawlessone ◴[28 Aug 25 19:45 UTC] No.45056247[source]▶
ok, but that's just one country.
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3. tick_tock_tick ◴[28 Aug 25 21:30 UTC] No.45057266[source]▶
I mean for AI literally the only countries involved are the USA and China. I doubt you think China is going to start respecting IP rights anytime soon.
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4. nl ◴[29 Aug 25 01:05 UTC] No.45058834{3}[source]▶
Mistral is in France.