Well, having personally used over $120 in Claude API credit on my $200/mo. Claude Code subscription...
in a single day, without parallel tasks, yeah, it sounds like the actual price. (And keep in mind, Claude's API is still running on zero-margin, if not even subsidized, AWS prices for GPUs; combined with Anthropic still lighting money on fire and presumably losing money on the API pricing.)
The future is not that AI takes over. It's when the accountants realize for a $120K a year developer, if it makes them even 20% more efficient (doubt that), you have a ceiling of $2000/mo. on AI spend before you break even. Once the VC subsidies end, it could easily cost that much. When that happens... who cares if you use AI? Some developers might use it, others might not, it doesn't matter anymore.
This is also assuming Anthropic or OpenAI don't lose any of their ongoing lawsuits, and aren't forced to raise prices to cover settlement fees. For example, Anthropic is currently in the clear on the fair use "transformative" argument; but they are in hot water over the book piracy from LibGen (illegal regardless of use case). The worst case scenario in that lawsuit, although unlikely, is $150,000 per violation * 5 million books = $750B in damages.
The future is not that AI takes over. It's when the accountants realize for a $120K a year developer, if it makes them even 20% more efficient (doubt that), you have a ceiling of $2000/mo. on AI spend before you break even. Once the VC subsidies end, it could easily cost that much. When that happens... who cares if you use AI? Some developers might use it, others might not, it doesn't matter anymore.
This is also assuming Anthropic or OpenAI don't lose any of their ongoing lawsuits, and aren't forced to raise prices to cover settlement fees. For example, Anthropic is currently in the clear on the fair use "transformative" argument; but they are in hot water over the book piracy from LibGen (illegal regardless of use case). The worst case scenario in that lawsuit, although unlikely, is $150,000 per violation * 5 million books = $750B in damages.