Probably not going to go belly-up in a while, but the enshittification cycle still applies. At the moment, investors are pouring billions into the AI business, and as a result, companies can offer services for free while only gently nudging users towards the paid tiers.
When the interest rates rise during the next recession, investors won’t have access to money any more. Then, the previously constant stream of money dries up, AI companies start cutting what the free tier has, and people start complaining about enshittification. During that period, the paid tiers also get restructured to squeeze more money out of the paying customers. That hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. Just keep an eye on those interest rates.
Don’t be so sure about that, the numbers look incredibly bad for them in terms of money burned per actual revenue, never mind profit. They can’t even pay for the inference alone (never mind training, staff, rent,…) from the subscriptions.
As long as they can convince investors of potential future revenue, they will be just fine. In the growth stage, companies don’t have to be profitable because the investors will cover the expenses. Being profitable becomes a high priority only when you run out of series F money, and the next investors can’t borrow another 700 million. It’s a combination of having low interest rates and convincing arguments.
BTW I don’t think this is a good way to run a company, but many founders and investors clearly disagree with me.
The difference between AI companies and most other tech companies is that AI companies have significant expenses that scale with the number of customers.
That’s a very good point. Actually, video hosting services also suffer from a similar problem, and that’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to compete with YouTube. Since there are so many LLM services out there at the moment, it makes me think that there must be a completely ridiculous amount of investor money floating around there. Doesn’t sound like a sustainable situation to me.
Apparently, the companies are hoping that everyone gets so hooked on LLMs that they have no choice but to pay up when the inevitable tsunami of enshittification hits us.
Probably not going to go belly-up in a while, but the enshittification cycle still applies. At the moment, investors are pouring billions into the AI business, and as a result, companies can offer services for free while only gently nudging users towards the paid tiers.
When the interest rates rise during the next recession, investors won’t have access to money any more. Then, the previously constant stream of money dries up, AI companies start cutting what the free tier has, and people start complaining about enshittification. During that period, the paid tiers also get restructured to squeeze more money out of the paying customers. That hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. Just keep an eye on those interest rates.
Don’t be so sure about that, the numbers look incredibly bad for them in terms of money burned per actual revenue, never mind profit. They can’t even pay for the inference alone (never mind training, staff, rent,…) from the subscriptions.
As long as they can convince investors of potential future revenue, they will be just fine. In the growth stage, companies don’t have to be profitable because the investors will cover the expenses. Being profitable becomes a high priority only when you run out of series F money, and the next investors can’t borrow another 700 million. It’s a combination of having low interest rates and convincing arguments.
BTW I don’t think this is a good way to run a company, but many founders and investors clearly disagree with me.
The difference between AI companies and most other tech companies is that AI companies have significant expenses that scale with the number of customers.
That’s a very good point. Actually, video hosting services also suffer from a similar problem, and that’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to compete with YouTube. Since there are so many LLM services out there at the moment, it makes me think that there must be a completely ridiculous amount of investor money floating around there. Doesn’t sound like a sustainable situation to me.
Apparently, the companies are hoping that everyone gets so hooked on LLMs that they have no choice but to pay up when the inevitable tsunami of enshittification hits us.
There are some numbers in this blog post https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the-tech-industry-2/ (and a couple of others on the same blog) and they really don’t look like OpenAI is going to last a couple of years until profitability.