The cost per 1M tokens has dropped, significantly, since 2023 or so.

The problem is that it's just not commercially viable, because you can't just say "We make money on inference", because that's a stupid thing to say. That's like saying the cash register at the supermarket is really profitable, because you sell a product for a higher price than it costs you to buy it. It may be true, but that's not how any of this works.

You can't just stop developing new products, because if you do, your existing product becomes worthless. If Ford just started selling their current models, they would make a lot of profit right now... and then none in a few years as their competitors sell newer, fancier cars. If OpenAI stops training new models, they will make a lot of money right now, and then nothing in 3 to 6 months from now.

Token pricing could double, and be free for OpenAI, and it still wouldn't save them, because you can't judge a business on how much money they earn at the cash register.

I just don’t get the business model at all, but maybe I’m just too stupid to understand

There is no businessmodel. The trick to keep burning cash, keep the stock high, keep the compensation for the people at the top flowing. The company can burn all the capital it wants, because the people at the top will keep getting paid.

One layer below that, there's a whole bunch of business idiots who think LLMs will let them save on paying their employees, so they're very invested in it.

One layer below that are a bunch of senior managemers who are just as stupid, but whose performance goals were just tied LLM use, so they've got a great reason to push it on everyone.

I mean, that was the joke for Amazon for years, but....look where they are now.

indeed, i refused to buy stock because it was costing $1 to make 80c in sales, what sort of business is that? and yet here we are, to be fair their cloud business is the big profit centre and that came later