> I wonder how much AI companies lost on this?

Probably zero, or even a profit. The idea that these companies are making a loss on subscriptions is an unsubstantiated HN fallacy.

On the contrary, they're probably making a small profit on subscriptions, or at least break even, and absolute bank on API pricing. Anthropic recently reported an 80% gross profit margin, for example.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/anthropic-t...