Wish this was basically any other source than the Polymarket X account that loves to post misleading sensational content for engagement.
EDIT: Found a better source than a gambling site's social media.
Kinda funny remembering how many HN comments I've read in the last few months insisting "Anthropic is profitable now" because of those cherry picked numbers for one quarter.
This may explain why they banned DeepSeek: competition from China is catching up quickly and western AI companies fear they'll never recover their losses.
Just a few years ago there was perhaps just as great a crisis in enterprise compute pricing. The end of "unlimited" storage accounts for enterprise customers. No one ran from gsuite and microsoft et al. They still kept paying for all the subscriptions to these sometimes redundant suites of services as they always did, only they now pay for additional storage solutions (in whatever shape those ended up manifesting as) as well.
> And we haven’t even got to the part where AI consumer pricing corrects to realistic models. Once that hits, companies will drop AI like a hot potato.
That ship has sailed. If you're a mid-sized company, with the resources of a mid-sized company, you'll always be able to download Deepseek's new Flash model and run it on your own hardware.
With all of the competition out there, prices arguably can't rise much further than they already have.
Where I work, the "general population" of workers, i.e. the non-techies have discovered Claude - and for the 6 past months there's been non-stop workshops and what have you on how to use Claude best. People are really treating Claude like the some god-sent tool.
Meanwhile, we've had a AI-group that's almost 6 years now, where we've explored the models and uses since they became commercially available.
We're trying to get the word out that our colleagues should not get too invested or locked to a single model or supplier. Try to become a vendor-agnostic AI user, while we're working on rolling out org wide local models and tools.
We really do have to remind users, all the time, that the price they pay right now for a monthly subscription, might blow up anytime - as these subscriptions are obviously heavily subsidized.
It's amazing how few people realize this is going on: it is not news! Or I mean ... I suppose it is ... but it's not new news.
This has been Anthropic's playbook since day one: be first to have an amazing AI, lock everyone in, raise prices a ton, become rich. When they realized they would never be able to lock people in with a better product, suddenly AIs started "going rogue" ... so they can lock people in with US government regulations (that only Anthropic and a few others can meet).
They have "bet the farm" on trying to follow that playbook, and have taken on huge debt (plus they've made some "fuzzy" business relationships that are almost loans) ... and all of this has been going on for years. We're just getting more articles as their "long term bet" gets closer and closer to failing, but again: this isn't news.
Indeed. We eval models regularly on their ability to record the amenities an apartment building has (ex. Fireplace, In-Unit Laundry, Hardwood Floors etc...). Classic structured data extraction task.
This allows https://fless.io to match what a renter is looking for without looking up a building's site (aggregators like zillow frequently have incorrect or non-unit specific amenities).
The cost at API rates is astounding.
An order of magnitude or more what coding plans go for. And everything is going up - coding plans and API rates both. Chinese or American frontier. Everything up.
API rates, currently, are so expensive for this particular workload that only self hosted or human classification are viable despite improvements in model capabilities.
Capabilities for this task at the current prices (even with claimed $ / token reductions) are nowhere close to viable as API in a business sense - just outsource the classification or host models yourself.
The implied valuations of Oai and Athr dictate either massive price increases or step changes to model performance.
Given model performance gains have been decidedly linear this leaves only price increases to fit the goal.
Not clear to us given that a basic task is barely price competitive as is, while requiring open weights and self hosting, that the valuations can be justified.
Wish this was basically any other source than the Polymarket X account that loves to post misleading sensational content for engagement.
EDIT: Found a better source than a gambling site's social media.
Kinda funny remembering how many HN comments I've read in the last few months insisting "Anthropic is profitable now" because of those cherry picked numbers for one quarter.
https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-recorded-net-loss...
Ahhhh I had someone parroting to me "anthropic is profitable now" in real life the other day. I guess they got it from hn.
This may explain why they banned DeepSeek: competition from China is catching up quickly and western AI companies fear they'll never recover their losses.
‘24% chance Anthropic announces bankruptcy by the end of next year.’
And we haven’t even got to the part where AI consumer pricing corrects to realistic models. Once that hits, companies will drop AI like a hot potato.
If anyone believed that they could replace humans with AI bots at a fraction of the cost, they’re about to have a major wake up call.
Just a few years ago there was perhaps just as great a crisis in enterprise compute pricing. The end of "unlimited" storage accounts for enterprise customers. No one ran from gsuite and microsoft et al. They still kept paying for all the subscriptions to these sometimes redundant suites of services as they always did, only they now pay for additional storage solutions (in whatever shape those ended up manifesting as) as well.
> And we haven’t even got to the part where AI consumer pricing corrects to realistic models. Once that hits, companies will drop AI like a hot potato.
That ship has sailed. If you're a mid-sized company, with the resources of a mid-sized company, you'll always be able to download Deepseek's new Flash model and run it on your own hardware.
With all of the competition out there, prices arguably can't rise much further than they already have.
Well it's from a prediction market so could just as easily flip to like 5% a few minutes after a suitable story in the news breaks.
Where I work, the "general population" of workers, i.e. the non-techies have discovered Claude - and for the 6 past months there's been non-stop workshops and what have you on how to use Claude best. People are really treating Claude like the some god-sent tool.
Meanwhile, we've had a AI-group that's almost 6 years now, where we've explored the models and uses since they became commercially available.
We're trying to get the word out that our colleagues should not get too invested or locked to a single model or supplier. Try to become a vendor-agnostic AI user, while we're working on rolling out org wide local models and tools.
We really do have to remind users, all the time, that the price they pay right now for a monthly subscription, might blow up anytime - as these subscriptions are obviously heavily subsidized.
These numbers make Uber's losses in the beginning seem like a trip to the grocery store.
Their net loss in 2025 was like $40B with $4B of revenue.
Looks like 2026 will be so much worse.
It's amazing how few people realize this is going on: it is not news! Or I mean ... I suppose it is ... but it's not new news.
This has been Anthropic's playbook since day one: be first to have an amazing AI, lock everyone in, raise prices a ton, become rich. When they realized they would never be able to lock people in with a better product, suddenly AIs started "going rogue" ... so they can lock people in with US government regulations (that only Anthropic and a few others can meet).
They have "bet the farm" on trying to follow that playbook, and have taken on huge debt (plus they've made some "fuzzy" business relationships that are almost loans) ... and all of this has been going on for years. We're just getting more articles as their "long term bet" gets closer and closer to failing, but again: this isn't news.
Indeed. We eval models regularly on their ability to record the amenities an apartment building has (ex. Fireplace, In-Unit Laundry, Hardwood Floors etc...). Classic structured data extraction task.
This allows https://fless.io to match what a renter is looking for without looking up a building's site (aggregators like zillow frequently have incorrect or non-unit specific amenities).
The cost at API rates is astounding.
An order of magnitude or more what coding plans go for. And everything is going up - coding plans and API rates both. Chinese or American frontier. Everything up.
API rates, currently, are so expensive for this particular workload that only self hosted or human classification are viable despite improvements in model capabilities.
Capabilities for this task at the current prices (even with claimed $ / token reductions) are nowhere close to viable as API in a business sense - just outsource the classification or host models yourself.
The implied valuations of Oai and Athr dictate either massive price increases or step changes to model performance.
Given model performance gains have been decidedly linear this leaves only price increases to fit the goal.
Not clear to us given that a basic task is barely price competitive as is, while requiring open weights and self hosting, that the valuations can be justified.
Has Anthropic been taking on debt? I thought they've been primarily selling equity.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50171966
Can the bubble please pop soon so I can buy the dip before retiring?
Why would you buy the dip of an unprofitable enterprise?
Not buying AI, buying other assets.
I’d rather know when it pops and buy the puts.