My point is that you can't cherry pick a profitable business unit if you don't have a story for how the entire business can operate profitably.

Cars have low margins, but they generally don't rely on an ongoing infusion of investor money to balance the books. The overall venture still has to turn a profit. Nobody is walking into Hyundai HQ and saying "We are going to sell Sonatas for $6,750 each, because if we can do it long enough, some magic will happen and we'll end up back in the green."

TBH, I'm not quite sure what the "some magic will happen" angle is for AI.

Compute gets cheaper, but I suspect the training arms race is running up costs faster still.

We're already seeing hints of price balking (definitely heard people at work saying they're hesitant about Fable due to the costs) so it's unclear if there's headroom there.

TBH, the best answer I can figure right now is that many players are hoping for a competitor's flameout-- the dream of being the last man standing, and then able to dictate market terms.