You can look at open source models hosted by various companies that have no reason to host them on a loss.
replyUber ran their ridesharing at a loss for years. This is a very common way to gain market share.
replyWhat market share? We are talking commodity models where the host does not matter at all at OpenRouter etc.
replyUber had massive VC investment and a moat. The companies he's referring to likely don't have much VC investment and zero moat.
replyI recently had Codex working for 80+ hrs non stop (as in literally that was a single running session in response to a single prompt!).
replyEven at $200 monthly subscription that kind of stuff burns through tokens at a rate where it's very difficult to believe that they are even breaking even, never mind profit.
thats nuts. what was it doing for 80 hrs?
replyProbably asked what’s the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
replyThe reality is we can’t trust accounting earnings anyway.
replyWe need to see the cash flows.
I don’t have “proof” but the existence of so many providers of free models on OpenRouter strongly suggests inference is running at a profit. There’s no winner-takes-all angle to being a faceless provider there (often the consumer doesn’t know who fulfilled the request), so there’s just no incentive at all for these small provider companies to exist unless inference is profitable under the right conditions.
reply>but the existence of so many providers of free models on OpenRouter strongly suggests inference is running at a profit
replyI don't think it suggests a profit, but rather a _hope_ for a _future_ profit, and a commitment to a strategy that may or may not pan out. Capitalism rewards those who are early to the party and commit to their bit.