To save folks looking this up:

>At current 2026 API rates, 500 billion AI tokens would cost roughly $100,000–$750,000 depending on the model, with most flagship models in the $150–$400 per million input tokens range

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Gigachad 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This stuff is all done on highly subsidized subscription plans. I suspect Antropic is quite happy to sell these people $100k of compute for $4k because it boosts their growth numbers and they can tell investors once they stop subsidizing, this will grow to $100k. Despite the fact that most of this stuff simply wouldn't be done without the subsidization.

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chii 4 hours ago | parent [-]

the exact same arguments were said about uber's business at the start.

Yet, it is now profitable.

The bet is that people realize how valuable these services are, and despite complaining, they still would pay the higher price. This realization would not happen without this initial subsidy from investors.

It isn't too different from drug dealer's first sample free...

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thway15269037 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Uber business model wasn't a subscription "for 10 bucks you can travel 900 lightyears a week"

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

Last I checked, Uber underperformed the S&P index since its IPO. Even Softbank didn't make a great return on its investment. The growth story was definitely oversold.

Also, Uber was peak ZIRP + COVID, money was cheap and growth was easy. I think the mountain to climb is a lot steeper now.

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Gigachad 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There’s also examples where this didn’t work. Moviepass for example.

Taxis were an established profitable business model and the uber subsidisation wasn’t anywhere near as much as AI subsidies.

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0x457 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Moviepass failed because they thought it's going to be like Gym membership - people buy and don't go, but guess what? People love going to movie theaters. On its own its not bad, see AMC Stubs, but AMC owns the theater, they sell you popcorn and soda. OpenAI an Anthropic is closer to AMC than Moviepass.

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isubkhankulov 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Disagree with your second paragraph. Uber/lyft subsidized into deep negative margin territory around ~2015 or so. Anthropic (and OpenAI) are subsidizing but not losing money on these consumer plans.

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edg5000 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> subsidizing but not losing money

????

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HWR_14 a minute ago | parent | next [-]

The claim is that uber and lyft lost money on each ride but that openai and anthropic make money on inference. Just not enough to pay the cost of developing the models. The difference is that uber and lyft had to change their pricing (or payment) models to make money, where anthropic or openai could just sell enough inference (at some level of sales).

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Gigachad 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's profitable if you don't count the expenses.

	▲	oblio an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think you're joking but that's Amodei & co are claiming with a straight face.

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j2kun 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I struggle to believe that someone would find it worth that much money to have a decompiled version of a game they also commit to keeping private.

	▲	girvo 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> they also commit to keeping private Reading between the lines: "The avid reader of my blog might have noticed that I had previously written two posts that have since been removed. Everyone else might now be wondering which game I am talking about. To both of you I can only say that corporate America was here to ruin our fun." Keeping it private likely wasn't the original plan...

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TomatoCo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where are you getting 150-400 per million input?

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing

OpenAI and Anthropic are both 10/mil in.

https://openrouter.ai/z-ai/glm-5.3#providers https://openrouter.ai/moonshotai/kimi-k3#providers Other frontier models are like 1-3/mil in.

Also, 500 billion is 500,000 millions. At the lower end of your 140/mil estimate that's 70 million dollars. Even at my 2/mil lookup for Chinese frontier models that's one million. Show your math for 100k-750k, please.

	▲	WillAdams 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It was a search for "average cost of 500 billion ai tokens" which may or may not have been the correct phrasing, but seemed straight-forward enough that at first blush, accepting the AI-generated answer seemed reasonable.

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GaggiX 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The vast majority of these tokens are cache input tokens so even at API price the cost would be much lower.

	▲	thway15269037 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even with 95% cache hit, and on cheapest chinese model, it would still be in tens of thousands of dollars (I assume that of 500B tokens at least 10B would be in "output"). If we switch gears to Kimi K* then if would very quickly escalate in hundred thousands USD.