[simonw]

Sell me that bridge then, because I believe OpenAI's staff who say it was because inference costs went down: https://twitter.com/TheRealAdamG/status/193244032829380632

Generally I'm skeptical of the idea that any of the major providers are selling inference at a loss. Obviously they're losing money when you include the cost of research and training, but every indication I've seen is that they're not keen to sell $1 for 80 cents.

If you want a hint at the real costs of inference look to the companies that sell access to hosted open source models. They don't have any research costs to cover so their priority is to serve as inexpensively as possible while still turning a profit.

Or take a good open weight model and price out what it would cost to serve at scale. Here's someone who tried that recently: https://martinalderson.com/posts/are-openai-and-anthropic-re...