> subsidizing use to build market share the same way

To an extent maybe, but that market is almost entirely commoditized already. Besides Cerebras and maybe Groq (which already charge a slight premium) all the other providers are more less interchangeable.

> Maybe it’s a lot of people who already had GPUs for crypto mining

I’m not sure the type of GPUs that were most popular for crypto are at all useful for LLMs?

>interchangeable

If there’s a few providers subsidizing, that’s the price ceiling. Everyone who wants to compete has to subsidize.

Now if this market had been operating for years, I’d say that it’s likely all these companies are profitable or close to it. But the market is so new and there’s so much hype, I find it very plausible that none of these guys are making a profit and they all hope to just hang in until all the subsidies go away.

> I’m not sure the type of GPUs that were most popular for crypto are at all useful for LLMs?

There’s some overlap. I’ve definitely read about people repurposing.