[sho]

Can we please stop with this irritatingly persistent myth? AI companies, at least the big ones, do not sell inference at a loss - far from it. This has been debunked and explained many times and yet it keeps being repeated.

The numbers aren't public but most guesses I've heard are that Anthropic's markup is around 50% on average, and that if considered in isolation, most models are profitable overall. The constant losses are instead due to training the next models, which will also eventually recoup but later, and forward capex investment.

This idea that big AI companies are normally and systematically selling inference at a loss as some kind of market share strategy is just not supported by the facts.

[rjh29]

You talk about myths and then quote vague guesses of 50% without sourcing.

[sho]

Yes, because it can't be sourced. These are private companies. That doesn't mean that anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's.

The CEO of Anthropic, for example, has publicly stated multiple times that if their individual models were companies in and of themselves, they'd be profitable. I have no reason to think he's lying.