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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: 0.006s | 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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chairhairair ◴[28 Aug 25 15:19 UTC] No.45053311[source]▶
Anyone paying attention should have zero trust in what Sam Altman says.
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simianwords ◴[28 Aug 25 16:09 UTC] No.45053915[source]▶
What do you think his strategy is? He has to make money at some point.

I don’t buy the logic that he will “scam” his investors and run away at some point.

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achenet ◴[28 Aug 25 18:58 UTC] No.45055711[source]▶
He makes money by convincing people to buy OpenAI stock.

If OpenAI goes down tomorrow, he will be just fine. His incentive is to sell the stock, not actually build and run a profitable business.

Look at Adam Neumann as an example of how to lose billions of investor dollars and still walk out of the ensuing crash with over a billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neumann

His strategy is to sell OpenAI stock like it was Bitcoin in 2020, and if for some reason the market decides that maybe a company that loses large amounts of cash isn't actually a good investment... he'll be fine, he's had plenty of time to turn some of his stock into money :)

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1. Tossrock ◴[28 Aug 25 20:19 UTC] No.45056594[source]▶
Altman doesn't have any stock. He's playing a game at a level people caught up on "capitalism bad" can't even conceptualize.
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2. simianwords ◴[29 Aug 25 05:59 UTC] No.45060710[source]▶
Holy shit you are right. He owns no equity and just gets a salary. I have no idea about the game he’s playing.
3. achenet ◴[29 Aug 25 13:00 UTC] No.45063543[source]▶
I'm more "capitalism good" (8 billion people on earth, 7 billion can read, 5 billion have internet, and almost no one dies in childbirth anymore in rich countries, which is several billion people), but that is really interesting that he has no stock and just gets salary.

I guess if other people buying stock in your company is what enables you to have a super high salary (+ benefits like company plane, etc), you are still kinda selling stock though, and honestly, having considered the "start a random software company aligned with the present trend (so ~2015 DevOps/Cloud, 2020 cryptocurrency/blockchain, 2024 AI/ML), pay myself a million dollar a year salary and close shop after 5 years because 'no market lol'" route to riches myself, I still wouldn't consider Altman to be completely free of perverse incentives here :)

Still, very glad you pointed that out, thanks for sharing that information ^^

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4. simianwords ◴[29 Aug 25 15:02 UTC] No.45065054[source]▶
Again incorrect. He doesn’t have a super high salary.