Deepseek is realistic about this and is offering great prices.

I think that once companies are more realistic about token demand they can start making a profit

What is China subsidises its inference providers to provide like utility level "intelligence" at or below cost globally until all the knowledge jobs in the west go the way of the manufacturing ones..

	▲	swiftcoder 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Even if that were true, the smaller quants that can be run on a MacBook aren't going anywhere
	▲	watwut 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Providing services below cost is how SV and American tech operated last 25 years. It was the same pattern again and again - sell bellow cost, competition cant compete, create quasi monopoly, enshittify and start earning. OpenAI and Anthropic still sells tokens under cost.

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throwaway27448 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup, and the marginal value of the boutique models is much lower than the marginal cost. Most workflows have no need for american models.