Nothing is subsidized. Subscriptions are profitable for both Anthropic and OpenAI.

Anthropic wanting to switch billing to API rates is them just wanting to generate more profit.

InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Nothing is subsidized. Subscriptions are profitable for both Anthropic and OpenAI.

Even if subscriptions are locally profitable (i. e., the cost of the subscription covers the cost of inference), they're still subsidized because they don't cover training and running the company; otherwise, these companies would be profitable.

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gck1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I can see that being true, and it very likely is true. But isn't infinite VC money and no incentives to optimize operations the reason behind that?

Take a look at China for example - they have no access to NVIDIA, so they're trying to build their own hardware, they have no unlimited funding, so they try to optimize things.

And Anthropic is complete opposite of that - if NVIDIA were to triple their prices tomorrow, Anthropic would still pay them.

In the end, either we all somehow go mad and start paying Anthropic tens of thousands of dollars per month so support this madness, or we will go with whoever isn't lighting cash on fire.

	▲	re-thc 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Take a look at China for example - they have no access to NVIDIA Not true. Stop following US media spam if needed. 1. Very recently, the US did close a loophole on sanctions that allowed Chinese companies to use NVIDIA hardware outside of China i.e. before that was closed they all had access. The trick was train outside, do adjustments, ship the disks back and use non-NVIDIA in China, but at least the training and endpoints not hosted in China could all use NVIDIA. 2. There's been plenty of reports including fines and bans e.g. to Supermicro on smuggling NVIDIA hardware to China. I doubt it has been stopped. You can't catch everyone.

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wsatb 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Nothing is subsidized" is a wild take. They might be making money on some users, perhaps even most users, but certainly not all. Also, "subsidized" doesn't just mean on compute.

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y1n0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's interesting. Do you have anything to back that claim up?

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gck1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I do, and it's called DeepSeek's pricing table. At the same time, "subscriptions are subsidized" cohort have no data whatsoever, and yet they're in every thread.

Granted, it could still mean that Anthropic just chooses to lose money - but that's Anthropic's choice.

DeepSeek has proven that inference can be much, much cheaper than what Anthropic advertises on their API rates page.

	▲	nickthegreek 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Granted, it could still mean that Anthropic just chooses to lose money - Then the cost is being subsidized by investor capital, but it is still subsidized.

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FrustratedMonky 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Nothing is subsidized"

So they are profitable?

I think you are mismatching accounting terms.

You can't say the 'subscriptions' are profitable without accounting for the cost of making the model that is the source of the subscription.

They are heavily subsidized by the shareholders. Investing, running at a loss, with hope of some future profitability.

	▲	gck1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		And yet, that is completely uninteresting to their user base. If saner factory can sell you the same tool at a fraction of the cost of a gold plated factory, your choice is going to be obvious.