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points by xienze 3 days ago | 0 comments

It's very simple, if you just assume they never have to spend money on training ever again, they're wildly profitable.

Compute is by far not the only cost associated with running a service, so, no?

Being sarcastic here. The usual argument everyone brings up "inference is extremely profitable, checkmate AI skeptics!" while dismissing the black hole that is training.

[–] skerit 2 days ago

> while dismissing the black hole that is training

True, but the point the "subsidized!" people are convinced of is that for each generated token Anthropic is losing money, when it's exactly the other way around.

[–] sm-silversight 3 days ago

Are these inference & training profitability numbers broken out in the S1?

[–] what 3 days ago

Sort of? They have “cost of revenue” which is compute and salaries (and whatever) for serving inference, then “research and development” which is cost of compute and salaries for training, then “sales and marketing”, then “operations”. R&D is like half the expenses.

[–] lokar 3 days ago

Are they doing the standard SV thing of pretending employee stock comp is free?