It's more like once you figure out how to make a really good lamp then producing lots of lamps will be profitable. But the lamps are currently suboptimal so we'll be in the red until that time.

It's more like you have a business making engines, each generation of engine has eventually turned out to be profitable over its lifespan, but each generation has an exponentially increasing R&D cost and your customers will switch from the old engines to a competitor if they don't like the newest generation.

You're stuck racing against your competitors with the distinct possibility that your R&D costs will outgrow the market demand, and you can't stop because otherwise your customers will stop investing in your dead end tech and switch.

OpenAI won't be able to cut R&D spend and collect rent on their existing models as long as the Chinese models keep up the pace of being ~6 months behind them for a fraction of the price.

And if you wait 12 months, someone will be giving away lamps for free that work just as well.

And then someone will come up with lamp pro max and you’ll be out of business. You realize why R&D exists in tech companies even though it’s a cost center right?