This seems to be the lynchpin of your argument.
It makes me wonder if I have been living under a rock, because I have never heard of frontier labs making money. AFAIK all AI firms are simply burning money to acquire customers at this stage. Is this wrong?
You're confusing the profit from the marginal token and overall profit (basically gross margin and operating margin). The comment you're replying to is calculating that AI labs are probably making a substantial profit per paid token. It's just that so far that profit has not been able to overcome the ongoing R&D and capex costs.
And the cost of not-quite-paid tokens.
I do not understand how the companies can end up in positive, unless something fundamental changes