> but they (and MS) are recouping inference costs from user subscription and API revenue with a healthy operating margin.

As far as I am aware the only information from within OpenAI one way or another is from their financial documents circulated to investors:

> The fund-raising material also signaled that OpenAI would need to continue raising money over the next year because its expenses grew in tandem with the number of people using its products.

Subscriptions are the lions share of their revenue (73%). It's possible they are making money on the average Plus or Enterprise subscription but given the above claim they definitely aren't making enough to cover the cost of inference for free users.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/technology/openai-chatgpt...