new | show | ask | jobs Github

mschuster91 6 hours ago

> There isn't much evidence at all that inference is "subsidised" (and by whom?)

Well... why else would the major providers now tighten the screws on per-token pricing?

▲

blfr 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Because they thought they could. Turns out the Chinese and Elon had other plans.

▲

mschuster91 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The Chinese providers are just as much getting subsidies from the CCP, and Musk/SpaceX is (indirectly) raiding retirement funds to fund the bonanza.

▲

trollbridge 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is no evidence Chinese providers are getting such subsidised, and in fact apparently Jinping (who presumably knows what the CPP is doing) was surprised when DeepSeek and Qwen generated so much buzz. In China, AI inference is just viewed as another basic utility, much like an e-mail provider or a mobile phone network.

I'm not aware of how Musk/SpaceX are "raiding retirement funds"?

	▲	mschuster91 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I'm not aware of how Musk/SpaceX are "raiding retirement funds"? NASDAQ bent their rules to allow SpaceX a (way too early) inclusion into the index and so did MSCI [2] and Russell [3]. Normally, a newly IPO'd stock would have required up to a year of "cooldown" (like the S&P 500 requires) so that stock prices can stabilize. Now though? Billions of dollars in funds are automatically flowing in from retirement accounts into SpaceX and artificially prop up the valuation of this grossly overvalued company. And OpenAI and Anthropic are looking to IPO as soon as possible as well to benefit from the same rules while the markets are still red-hot bullish for anything that can be labeled even remotely related to AI. Assuming that there will be a catastrophic collapse event in the AI bubble - the triggers can be anything from regulatory issues (no matter if in the US, EU or China), new free models from China cutting off the moat of the Big Three, venture capital running out and forcing realistic pricing or a natural disaster/war wiping out TSMC or RAM factories, interrupting supply for the continued outbuild -, this will directly (and massively) impact retirement accounts. In addition, even the sell-offs required in ETF rebalancing can have serious economic consequences. Something has to give when SpaceX, OAI and Anthropic all enter. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/nasdaq-che... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/msci-confirms... [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/russell-rebal...

▲

blfr 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The truly cheap Chinese models are usually the open weights ones so while there may be a training subsidy, the inference prices reflect real costs.