They made $4 billion last year, not really "little to no money". I agree it's not clear they can justify their valuation but it's certainly not a bubble.
But didn't they spend $9 billion? If I have a machine that magically turns $9 billion of investor money into $4 billion in revenue, I need to have a pretty awesome story for how in the future I am going to be making enormous piles of money to pay back that investment. If it looks like frontier models are going to be a commodity and it is not going to be winner-take-all... that's a lot harder story to tell.
There is a pretty significant different between “buy $9 for $4” and selling a service that costs $9 to build and run per year for $4 per year. Especially when some people think that service could be an absolute game changer for the species.
It’s ok to not buy into the vision or think it’s impossible. But it’s a shallow dismissal to make the unnuanced comparison, especially when we’re talking about a brand new technology - who knows what the cost optimization levers are. Who knows what the market will bear after a few more revs.
When the iPhone first came out, it was too expensive, didn’t do enough, and many people thought it was a waste of apples time when they should be making music players.
> I started a business that would give people back $9 if they gave me $4
I feel like people overuse this criticism. That's not the only way that companies with a lot of revenue lose money. And this isn't at all what OpenAI is doing, at least from their customers' perspective. It's not like customers are subscribing to ChatGPT simply because it gives them something they were going to buy anyway for cheaper.
mandevil|10 months ago
BosunoB|10 months ago
SirensOfTitan|10 months ago
OpenAI models are already of the most expensive, they don’t have a lot of levers to pull.
edmundsauto|10 months ago
It’s ok to not buy into the vision or think it’s impossible. But it’s a shallow dismissal to make the unnuanced comparison, especially when we’re talking about a brand new technology - who knows what the cost optimization levers are. Who knows what the market will bear after a few more revs.
When the iPhone first came out, it was too expensive, didn’t do enough, and many people thought it was a waste of apples time when they should be making music players.
tshaddox|10 months ago
I feel like people overuse this criticism. That's not the only way that companies with a lot of revenue lose money. And this isn't at all what OpenAI is doing, at least from their customers' perspective. It's not like customers are subscribing to ChatGPT simply because it gives them something they were going to buy anyway for cheaper.
nativeit|10 months ago