SemiAnalysis has calculated how big that gap really is. After testing subscription tiers from both OpenAI and Anthropic – running long-horizon coding and agentic tasks until weekly...
In five years once this RAM nonsense is over you’ll be able to run a comparatively high quality local LLM for very little money. I can’t see how these companies will ever make their money back.
I’m slightly optimistic that manufacturers will return to the retail market eventually. Every AI company is racing to hyperscale right now but there will be a point where the infrastructure is built and at that point the growth will slow down quite a bit. In that scenario there will be ongoing demand for components to be replaced as they become obsolete but I can’t imagine the demand will be the same level it is right now as everyone rushes to build.
That’s assuming this all works the way they want it to. If the economics aren’t viable and the bubble bursts…
Their Datacenter buildout doesn’t work they want to. Most projects are very much delayed, and those that even started getting built are over budget. OpenAI and Anthropic will collapse in the next years, and this is coming from someone who absolutely sees the good things about the technology itself.
There is no way, absolutely NO WAY to recuperate the amount of cash burnt on those two companies, and that is not even counting the amount of AI Startup whose cash is currently flowing towards to those two.
How about bailouts? GPT integration with Visa? IPOs sucked into funds? There’s a lot of money they can and will try to vacuum, don’t you worry about that. And banks will do their damnest best to help with all of that - just look at SpaceX.
In five years once this RAM nonsense is over you’ll be able to run a comparatively high quality local LLM for very little money. I can’t see how these companies will ever make their money back.
If manufacturers are willing to sell components to us in five years that is.
Of course if the colllapse happens before then the story might be different…
I’m slightly optimistic that manufacturers will return to the retail market eventually. Every AI company is racing to hyperscale right now but there will be a point where the infrastructure is built and at that point the growth will slow down quite a bit. In that scenario there will be ongoing demand for components to be replaced as they become obsolete but I can’t imagine the demand will be the same level it is right now as everyone rushes to build.
That’s assuming this all works the way they want it to. If the economics aren’t viable and the bubble bursts…
Their Datacenter buildout doesn’t work they want to. Most projects are very much delayed, and those that even started getting built are over budget. OpenAI and Anthropic will collapse in the next years, and this is coming from someone who absolutely sees the good things about the technology itself.
Stop, I can only handle so much good news!
There is no way, absolutely NO WAY to recuperate the amount of cash burnt on those two companies, and that is not even counting the amount of AI Startup whose cash is currently flowing towards to those two.
How about bailouts? GPT integration with Visa? IPOs sucked into funds? There’s a lot of money they can and will try to vacuum, don’t you worry about that. And banks will do their damnest best to help with all of that - just look at SpaceX.
At least they failed at getting into index funds for now.
🤞