nl 15 days ago

The unspoken context there is that the inference isn't the thing causing the losses.

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  • gitremote 15 days ago

    Inference contributes to their losses. In January 2025, Altman admitted they are losing money on Pro subscriptions, because people are using it more than they expected (sending more inference requests per month than would be offset by the monthly revenue).

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

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    • aurareturn 15 days ago

      So people find more value than they thought so they'll just up the price. Meanwhile, they still make more money per inference than they lose.

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      • oblio 14 days ago

        This assumes that the value obtained by customers is high enough to cover any possible actual cost.

        Many current AI uses are low value things or one time things (for example CV generation, which is killing online hiring).

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      • gitremote 15 days ago

        Currently, they lose more money per inference than they make for Pro subscriptions, because they are essentially renting out their service each month instead of charging for usage (per token).

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hn92726819 15 days ago

I think you maybe have misunderstood the parent (or maybe I did?). They're saying you can't compare an individual's cost to run a model against OpenAI's cost to run it + R&D. Individuals aren't paying for R&D, and that's where most of the cost is.

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