Typically R&D is not part COGS. It’s absolutely part of the bottom line when you will typically recognize the cost over some period of time to try to get a true picture of the business.

It’s also easier to strip it out of the picture to think about how much it costs to serve the next token. If you can have great economics to serve the next token (profitable) you can always figure out ways to further reduce your R&D costs.

Now they are absolutely intertwined but I don’t think this is ever as big of an issue that people make it out to be. Replace token with any widget, this is how businesses measure themselves.

Yes, but note that there are two claims in the article:

1) gross margins are 80% w/o revenue sharing.

2) gross margins are positive w/ revenue sharing.

So that means Anthropic is making money on every token, and customers are willing to pay 80% margins (some of which might go to e.g. Bedrock to serve the model).