[armchairhacker]

Wild guess, maybe OpenAI is deeply in debt and Sam Altman was hiding it (possibly committing fraud)? Because a benefit to prepaid billing is that they'll get more cash in the short term.

Also, at least part of the debt may be because people were getting compute without paying for it in the pay-per-use model. This could explain why paid memberships are being paused too (e.g. people mass-registering and then getting chargebacks).

[crop_rotation]

It will improve cash flow somewhat, but nothing that major to change anything when billions of dollars are being spent.

[armchairhacker]

Maybe it's more about a possible exploit where you can skip paying if you pay-as-you-go.

[crop_rotation]

That is too small a thing for something like this. All big users can be taken to court to pay anyways.

[true_religion]

But how about a hundree thousand small users?

Its not just that you lose revenue, but you also strain existing resources degrading service and satisfaction for other legitimate customers.

[nikolay]

You're right. I doubt this is just a coincidence!

[refulgentis]

RTFA https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38313215