Even amortized over a few years, they clearly expect to be able to raise prices soon. If Microsoft stops laundering revenue through OpenAI, and as Stability switches away from free stuff, the best AI tools are about to get a lot more expensive.
No one is going to pay $100 for “better than Google search” chatGPT, even if its AGI tier
But paying $100 for a “junior dev who takes over all the grunt work” is still a value buy
My understanding is that the APIs are profitable, and the best alternative (spin up mixtral on cloud provider) isn't that expensive. So there's some downward pressure there.
I expect ChatGPT is priced right where anthropic and OpenAI want. It's generating cash, and if you're a heavy user they can rate limit or offer a higher tier
Is that higher tier what you're expecting?
Once we get free models that are as good as GPT4, while there will still be a market for a “GPT5”, the current applications will experience serious price competition.
If I can fulfill my objectives with a commodity model with GPT-4 capabilities then I’m not going to pay any $$$ for GPT-5 because my needs are already met. So OpenAI will lose customers at the same time as gaining them.
The price at the top end will go up, but the price at the bottom end (which is currently the top end) will fall.
Not sure this is the phrase you meant as no one is accusing Microsoft of laundering money via OpenAI.