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Comment by breckenedge | Hacker News Reader

If they’re not making money[1], and competitors are, or competitors are able to run at a negative for longer, then things could definitely wrap up for them quickly. To most consumers, LLMs will be a feature (of Google/Bing/X/Meta/OS), not a product itself.

[1] https://www.itpro.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/peo...

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> To most consumers, LLMs will be a feature (of Google/Bing/X/Meta/OS), not a product itself.

OpenAI rejected a 97.4B USD buyout in February 2025 and won’t be absorbed anytime soon: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/technology/openai-elon-mu...

Don't worry; they'll have plenty of time to regret that.

There's a reason they're sweating the data issue. As much as it sucks to say it, Google/Bing/Meta/etc. all have a shitton of proprietary human-generated data they can work with, train on, fine tune with, etc. OpenAI _needs_ more human generated data desperately to keep going.

I remember for years people on HN said Uber would never work as a profitable business because it spent a lot of VC money earlier on without having enough revenue to cover it all. It's been around for 16yrs now despite running in the black until 2023.

FYI: s/running in the black/running in the red/

[0] https://languagesystems.edu/history-of-idioms-to-be-in-black...

uber is like a fine wine. it will appreciate and pay dividends until it bursts when waymo et. al. take over the streets in 20 years

Waymo has ~1000 cars. Uber has 8 million drivers. Worst case Uber will be acquired or merger or make a deal with one of the many AI driving startups.

I predict Waymo will have their own struggles with profitability. Last I heard the LIDAR kit they put on cars costs more than the car. So they'll have to mass produce + maintain some fancy electronics on a million+ cars.

Do you remember when people also thought rabbit would be a revolutionary AI device?

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