alt Hacker NewsThe point being made here is that most of those costs are amortized capital costs, which get wiped in bankruptcy.
That $5 per 1M token doesn't literally cost $5 per 1M token. It's more like they had to build a datacenter for $500M that can service 100T tokens over its lifetime. They did this by borrowing money on the capital markets, and now they have to pay interest to those bondholders, interest that they can recoup with their $80/1MT prices. But if it turns out they can't charge $80 and have to charge $1, they won't be able to make those interest payments. They enter bankruptcy, the court wipes the debt clean, and now they don't have to pay interest, only the actual operating costs, which may be more like 50c/1MT. The company gets recapitalized with the new owners being largely the bondholders, the existing equity holders get wiped out, and they can compete with the commodity producers now.
Datacenters aren't free to run.
You have land taxes and or rent, building upkeep, staffing costs, electricity, water, hardware replacement costs.
And new build DCs have blown all these costs through the roof justifying the decision because the price of compute is so high. When the prices come crashing down, the expenses will remain fixed where they are now.