> based entirely on the announcements of the inference providers themselves who also get very cagey when asked to show their work

I mean sure, it's self reported.

But the inference prices somewhere like Fireworks or TogetherAI charges is comparable to what Google/AWS/Azure charge for the same model an we know they aren't losing money - they have public accounts that show it, eg:

https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-resets-amazon-...

Fireworks’ gross margin—gross profit as a percentage of revenue—is roughly 50%, according to the same person

https://archive.is/Y26lA#selection-1249.65-1249.173

> In particular there's a troubling tendency to call revenue "recurring" before it actually, you know, recurs.

If someone has a subscription then yes that is pretty normal.