>It makes me wonder if I have been living under a rock, because I have never heard of frontier labs making money.

You're confusing the profit from the marginal token and overall profit (basically gross margin and operating margin). The comment you're replying to is calculating that AI labs are probably making a substantial profit per paid token. It's just that so far that profit has not been able to overcome the ongoing R&D and capex costs.

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kgwgk 2 days ago | parent [-]

> not been able to overcome the ongoing R&D and capex costs.

And the cost of not-quite-paid tokens.

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margalabargala 2 days ago | parent [-]

Which may or may not exist, hence this thread.

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kgwgk 16 hours ago | parent [-]

Non-paid tokens do definitely exist and they weren’t included in the remark about “substantial profit per paid token”. Underpaid/subsidized tokens also exist which don’t provide “substantial profit”.

	▲	margalabargala 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are you talking about free promo tokens the company gives out, or are you implying that subscription tokens are sufficiently subsidized so as to be below cost?