this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Their point is that those API prices might not match reality, and the prices may be artificially low to build hype and undercut competitors. We don't know how much it costs OpenAI, however we do know that they're not making a profit.
Or it might not. It would be a huge short term risk to do so.
As FaceDeer said, that we truly don't know.
OpenAI are not profitable today, and don't estimate they'll be profitable until 2029, so it's almost guaranteed that they're selling their services at a loss. Of course, that's impossible to verify - since they're a private company, they don't have to release financial statements.
There's a difference between selling at a loss, and having a loss.
OpenAI let's people use models for free with very little limits other than reducing the model quality over time, and they have very generous limits before they limit you at that.
That all costs money and is a loss for them.
If they get someone who's willing to pay, and they charge $20/m and on average, they net $5 profit per customer, they aren't selling it at a loss, they just need more customers. It's possible that a paid customer uses it even more though and it actually does incur a loss per paid customer and they're doing that to try and gain users while they figure out how to lower their costs, but that seems less likely.