Agreed. My (somewhat educated) guess is that top labs have healthy margins on API pricing. But this release will add another 3rd party / clear of conflict datapoint in this estimation.
replyeven deepseek, with their current (dirt cheap) price, can earn enough profit to cover the cost (hardware investment?) in 10 months.
replyWill the model even be competitive in 10 months though? Seems like models that reach top 20 on OpenRouter see 50% of all token spend by day 80, and 80% by day 180.
replyAs long as the hardware can be used on newer models, hardware costs can be recouped running a future model.
replyBut if they're hoping to recoup non-recurring engineering costs rather than just hardware costs, they do need to consider the useful lifetime of the specific model.
That numner blends in training or no?
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