[humanizersequel]

They're doing about a billion per month in revenue by running proprietary models on GPUs like these. Unless they're selling inference with zero/negative margin, it seems like a business model that could be made profitable very easily.

[mgh95]

Revenue != profit, and you don't need to become net negative margin to be net unprofitable. Expensive researchers, expensive engineers, expensive capex, etc.

Inference has extremely different unit economics from a typical SaaS like Salesforce or adtech like google or facebook.

[humanizersequel]

All of those expenses could be trimmed in a scenario where OpenAI or other big labs pivot to focus primarily on profitability via selling inference.

[mrandish]

> Revenue != profit

Indeed. And even if that revenue is net profitable right now (and analysts differ sharply on whether it really is), is there a sustainable moat that'll keep fast-followers from replicating most of OpenAI's product value at lower cost? History is littered with first-movers who planted the crop only to see new competitors feast on the fruit.

[AlexandrB]

And even if they are selling inference at negative margin, they'll make it up in scale!

[kapone]

These kinds of phrases are...eerily similar to the phrases heard right before...the .com bust. If you were old enough at the time, that's exactly what the mindset was back then.

The classic story of the shoeshine boy giving out stock tips...and all that.

We all know how that turned out.