Most/all private labs have cited inference is profitable. This was happening before the large push to scrap plans and largely charge folks the underlying api rates. Second take a look at the pricing of open models. Now certainly it’s not direct 1-1 comparison but we can use it as a baseline. Now of course folks might not be telling the truth but one of those situations where I see too many markers on the true side.

For supply look at outages and growth rates at companies like openrouter. The demand is growing every week.