I've seen some calculation I think from an HSBC analyst that it would take a monthly subscription of $200/mo. from some large portion of the US population for some insane number of years to break even.

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Aurornis 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> from some large portion of the US population

What a silly calculation.

OpenAI’s customer base is global. Using US population as the customer base is deliberately missing the big picture. The world population is more than 20X larger than the US population.

It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. It’s not reasonable to expect consumers to drive demand for these services.

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johnnyanmac 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>OpenAI’s customer base is global.

I'd be willing to bet that, like many US websites, OpenAI's users are at lest 60% American. Just because there's 20x more people out there doesn't mean they have the same exposure to American products.

For instance, China is an obvious one. So that's 35%+ of the population already mostly out of consideration.

>It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers.

I don't think a few thousand companies can outspend 200m users paying $200 a month. I won't call it a "mathematical impossibility", but the math also isn't math-ing here.

	▲	Marsymars 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even if you grant that OpenAI might be as successful as Apple at international expansion and support, that’s still only a non-US market about double the size of the US market.

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consp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> OpenAI’s customer base is global.

Since when is English everyone's primary language?

	▲	eisfresser 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		ChatGPT is totally fluid in German and French (i.e.), their market size is my no means limited to the anglosphere.