In any case, there is no future for any AI company that uses a subscription-based approach, at least not one where they don’t directly pass on the cost of compute. This is a huge problem for both Anthropic and OpenAI, as their scurrilous growth-lust means that they’ve done everything they can to get customers used to paying a single monthly cost that directly obfuscates the cost of doing business.

Ed Zitron always has a lot of (probably too many) words and I think there is more value in present LLM output than he sees, but his financial analysis I very much believe. This section on subscriptions and token cost seems spot on, and I also don’t know how it can possibly get resolved without some magic fix appearing.