even deepseek, with their current (dirt cheap) price, can earn enough profit to cover the cost (hardware investment?) in 10 months.
even deepseek, with their current (dirt cheap) price, can earn enough profit to cover the cost (hardware investment?) in 10 months.
Will the model even be competitive in 10 months though? Seems like models that reach top 20 on OpenRouter see 50% of all token spend by day 80, and 80% by day 180.
As long as the hardware can be used on newer models, hardware costs can be recouped running a future model.
But if they're hoping to recoup non-recurring engineering costs rather than just hardware costs, they do need to consider the useful lifetime of the specific model.