Mistral is more profitable as a general percentage sure, but take their overall revenue: about $400 million annually.

Good, until you compare that to OpenAI’s behemoth $70 billion.

Sure OpenAI has much higher operating expenses, but which position would you rather be in? If OpenAI cut off all training and R&D tomorrow, would their 1 billion users simply vanish? Could Mistral ever realistically acquire 1 billion users?

Point being that profitable isn’t telling the whole story. And I don’t know if lack of resources is a great excuse, when Chinese labs are doing more with less, and it’s ultimately up to every competitor to win as best they can, regardless of their circumstances.

Great story you told, though. My old track coach was also an asshole, but of the more lovable variety.

I think right now it should definitely be a race to profitability, because revenue will not save you from unsustainable finances, no matter how large the values are.

I think OpenAI is currently far enough ahead that they could just cut training and R&D for a while (maybe even 1-2 years) and rake in some money before they'd need to start again, but if a smaller company finds a way to keep doing R&D while also being profitable, it doesn't matter if they're a little behind in quality, they will win in the long term.

>when Chinese labs are doing more with less

I need a source for this. AFAIK, the government heavily subsidize those labs.