There is a lot of money coming in from industry, actually an exponentially increasing amount of money - money that would otherwise go to employees is now going to AI companies. There are more startups than you can shake a stick at that are basically creating virtual workers for xyz task and selling them to companies. All that money is funneling back to AI companies. It's a gold rush and employee salaries are the gold.
You can quibble about the exact numbers, but I think it’s fairly clear at this point that inference is profitable with decent margins. Like you say, unit economics are more interesting than the profitability of the company as a whole.
This thing is going to explode. From this I have to imagine OpenAIs numbers are also going to be much worse than people imagine / what has been shared.
>Samsung chip profit jumps almost 50-fold; supply shortage to worsen in 2027
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-r...
>South Korean April exports rise 48.0% y/y as chip boom extends
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-april...
To the point where the big memory makers are suddenly trillion AI-dollar companies.