to clarify, I mean that the big model companies are charging consumers much less than equivalent API pricing but they're not actually losing money so its more of a steep at-cost discount for inference. It likely does not fully cover amortized R&D just like the other reply stated but it does still cover marginal inference cost (GPU/power/etc)
Uber and Lyft were paying drivers $X but charging users way less than $X so they were literally burning investor money to get market share.
Uber and Lyft were paying drivers $X but charging users way less than $X so they were literally burning investor money to get market share.