Tokens can be sold at profit, but 70% of compute expenditure goes to R&D and model training[0]. Inference needs to cover all of that as well as being profitable in a vacuum.
[0] https://epoch.ai/data-insights/openai-compute-spend
this will change as inference demand increases (which is happening right now faster than many people expected)
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this will change as inference demand increases (which is happening right now faster than many people expected)