They basically don't exist in the currently most profitable LLM market (coding).
Yes, subs like codex are heavily subsidized. But API billing has massive margins and that's what enterprises pay.
They basically don't exist in the currently most profitable LLM market (coding).
Yes, subs like codex are heavily subsidized. But API billing has massive margins and that's what enterprises pay.
On the other hand, the consumer side of the market seems to be less competitive right now.
OpenAI's new Mac app doesn't even have a normal "Chat" option now. OpenAI might be chasing coding and b2b sales more now that they realise very few regular consumers pay for subscriptions.
Does it have "massive" margins? Afaik no one has said publicly what margins there are on an API call?
"As of October [2025], OpenAI's compute margins reached 70%, up from 52% at the end of 2024 and double the rate in January 2024, [The Information] said, citing a person familiar with the figures."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-21/openai-se...
As for Anthropic, the rumors I remember seeing for their API margins were more like 85-90%, but I don't have a reference at hand for those. But once you know the API is wildly profitable and the subscriptions are roughly break-even and not even a big slice of their income, all of the investment makes a lot more sense.
It says the original report was in the Information, which I can't see, but I'm skeptical that they includes the training cost? And how much that changes the figure?