> The idea of removing model training from your costs is a little wild tbh.

Yeah, I didn't believe they'd claim something like that. But yes indeed, from the article:

> Anthropic's gross margins are above 80% before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners, including Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, and the cost of training its model,

Is this how all AI companies calculate if they're profitable or not, by removing the highest costs? What a circus.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard variants of ‘they’re losing money on every query’ and ‘I’m getting 10k worth of tokens for $200’ over the last year. People clearly believed serving margins were -ve

> The profitability of being able to serve a query wasn't really under question

In one sense, yes, but I do see people question it regularly.

I think part of the big push to "slow down AI development" is to add some sort of regulatory pressure that will give them sort cover to train less models and slow their burn rates

> idea of removing model training from your costs is a little wild tbh

It's one of several metrics and tries to estimate steady-state profitability. It's the only one being leaked because it's the most sensational one. But don't assume cash-flow profitability is negative just because you don't know it.

I didn't realize how much money Uber makes from ads.... Why does every business devolve into an ad platform?

> The profitability of being able to serve a query wasn't really under question (nor is the margin expected to be anything less than 80%+) I think.

HN had long debates about whether AI inference could even be affordable from a compute perspective.

Well then you haven't listened to Ed Zitron or any of the other AI bubble doomers. His contention is that its worthless and they lose money on every query.