The same is true for Anthropic, by the way.

ceroxylon an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Anthropic appears to have found a path to profitability: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/08/17/anthropic...

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combobyte an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Those numbers intentionally exclude the single largest operating expense that Anthropic has: model training. [1]

So yeah, if they stop training models forever, Anthropic will probably start making a profit... until someone else with better models comes along to eat their lunch.

[1] https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2026091414/the-...

	▲	ahartmetz an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In the discussion of a similar article, it was called PBBT - profit before bad things.
	▲	freecodeio 4 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		kind of puts it in 4K the reason behind "we must pace the frontier"
	▲	boc 44 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Or if model training is more of a rollercoaster, where spending gets you to the top of the hill where you create a massive internal model which can then build the next version of itself for cheaper and cheaper amounts relative to human R&D costs. If Anthropic is first over that hill, they can race far ahead.
	▲	simianwords 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Maybe... just maybe companies find an equilibrium? Maybe companies reinvest in training because there's performance increase?

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stymaar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They have found a path to “profitability” iif you define “profitable” in a way that makes every early stage start-up that has at least one paying customer as “profitable”. Literally any start-up has a COGS lower than their income, but that doesn't mean anything at actual profitability given that the rest of their expenses dwarfs it.

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Eufrat an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I believe the entire basis of their profitable quarter was getting a discount on compute from Musk.

All these figures are so utterly weaselly. AAR is a made up measure to make them look good. If they cannot show GAAP numbers, they are hiding something. Full stop. While as private companies they are under no legal obligation to show us their books, their PR and intent to go public requires it.

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runako an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Anthropic likely would not be saying, in October, that they planned to go public next month, if this were also true of their business.

In the last ~month, OpenAI announced a delay to its IPO and Anthropic put a relatively near-term range on its IPO date. These are very different signals.

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

Yep, I agree. The only 'frontier' any of the big labs are racing towards is the frontier of financial ruin.

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pianopatrick 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Well there certainly is at least some kind of viable business running large AI models for a fee.

These are useful and too big to run locally.

The ultimate size of that business in terms of revenues and profits may not match current expectations, but it's also not 0

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bombcar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I think we're going to suddenly see them greatly scale back training and try to sell inference-only, but they all know when they do that someone can jump up and outstrip them.

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teiferer an hour ago | parent | next [-]

But only as long as training actually improves models significantly. As soon as those improvements stay below a certain threshold, the better move is to invest your R&D money into other things like harnesses or new tricks one can play with existing models and the immense cost of training is just not worth it to be 0.5% ahead.

I'm absolutely certain that we will reach that point, just not when. Could come sooner than we think though.

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xienze an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I think we're going to suddenly see them greatly scale back training and try to sell inference-only

Remember a few weeks ago when all the AI labs said "we need to slow down, to uh, prevent destroying the world"?

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Ding!

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simianwords 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

In this version of conspiracy theory, all the labs secretly understood that training wasn't economically feasible anymore so they all jointly made it look like they were stopping for safety reasons.

Is there no end to this kind of lazy conspiracy theory

	▲	ambicapter 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You don't need to communicate to coordinate. All these companies have the same business model, if it was financially advantageous for one of them to push that narrative, then it's financially advantageous for all of them.

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bluecalm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

IPO = It's Probably Overpriced.

The reason is that companies can choose the best timing to go public - when their financial look the best - and they do. Anthropic trying to go public very soon is a good tell their financial look pretty decent. OpenAI postponing the IPO is a very good tell theirs look bad.