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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

>Hasn't AI been horrible for FAANG fundamentally?

No. Net income is up quite a bit and profit margins maintained at Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Amazon. Meta net income is flat, but they are maintaining profit margins.

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Zitron's claim is that much of that boost in profit for microsoft and alphabet and amazon is from only a few customers, specifically openAI and anthropic, and that those companies are buying and promising to buy lots of resources with money from investments from those same companies, and that largely this is unsustainable unless openai and anthropic can find a profitable business model.

And with both OpenAi and Anthropic are announcing record revenue growth to the point where Anthropic is now profitable this seems like it's going to work out fine for them.

Would they announce record losses and financial distress?

We'll see when they go public. Until then all these press releases are strategic messaging...

> Would they announce record losses and financial distress?

Of course not, but private investors get to see their books and investors are lining up to invest.

Until they go public, no one will know except insiders, and they are not really talking. Do you want to buy a pink elephant?

He is right about that. Those companies are subsidizing the use of their models and at some point they are going to have to make a profit. It is unsustainable the direction they are currently headed in many people don’t like the messenger of bad news, but someone’s gonna be caught holding the bag stay clear of the blast crater.

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