OpenAI and Profitability?

Depends on who you think of as the customer.

Viewing OpenAI as a consulting firm whose services Microsoft is willing to be tens of billions for, then yes. With the transaction spread across Azure credits, buying equity at above market rates and maybe even direct payment from the GitHub/Office orgs.

Narrowing the discussion to marginal profit per token on the API I reckon it’s possible they’re break even but hard to tell.

The average profit per token allowing for R & D is almost certainly negative though, as AI devs and training models is super expensive. Objectively this is hinted at by them consuming more capital in recent fundraising.

OpenAI went from non-for-profit in 2015 to capped-profit in 2019.

So the max profit they’re making is at most 100x the investment they’ve received.

I think they’ll be profitable, ChatGPT is taking the world by storm and becoming a part of everyone’s workflows…

right now theyre using vc money, their focus is user traction and vendor lock-in, not really profits yet.