That doesn’t seem to bother OpenAI insiders, though, who hope to be bringing in $125 billion in annual revenue by 2029.
To hit that kind of revenue they would need to convince 5% of the world’s population to spend $20 a month on a chatbot. Netflix has barely managed to reach about two thirds of that subscriber number, and they offer a whole-ass streaming service. Obviously OpenAI can supplement consumer sales with enterprise and API access, but so far they’re doing a very bad job of that.
But even if they did hit those numbers, they’d still be running at a loss. By their own admission their product isn’t even profitable at $200 a month. More customers won’t make you more money when everything you sell is a loss leader.
There probably are people who consider $200 a month for an AI to be worthwhile, or their employer does, but I doubt there are enough to keep multiple AI companies running.
To hit that kind of revenue they would need to convince 5% of the world’s population to spend $20 a month on a chatbot. Netflix has barely managed to reach about two thirds of that subscriber number, and they offer a whole-ass streaming service. Obviously OpenAI can supplement consumer sales with enterprise and API access, but so far they’re doing a very bad job of that.
But even if they did hit those numbers, they’d still be running at a loss. By their own admission their product isn’t even profitable at $200 a month. More customers won’t make you more money when everything you sell is a loss leader.
There probably are people who consider $200 a month for an AI to be worthwhile, or their employer does, but I doubt there are enough to keep multiple AI companies running.
At that insane rate, it would be much more cost effective to just buy really good hardware and run open weight models locally.