The thing with drug discovery is that the bottleneck is not coming up with new molecules, etc. It's the multi-year, extremely expensive clinical trials that often don't even succeed. I doubt it will be a big moneymaker for Anthropic and OpenAI, because the best they can hope for is to sell a software product to pharma companies, but the pharma companies already have lots of scientists with a million promising molecules already in study they will never even make it to clinical trials.
In other words, can AI tech help? Probably, but I doubt it's going to be a major money maker, and it won't make a ton of money overnight. It's not like Claude Code where every programmer can begin using it instantly.
If you had asked HN 3 years ago what would code-generating market would be, they would have used the exact same reasoning and given us the opinion "Why no one will pay for glorified auto-complete"
The idea that AI curing cancer, heart disease, aging (you get the idea) won't be a money maker because "clinical trials" is absurd. Of course it will be. Obviously it isn't the same thing as coding agents. But a lot of money makers aren't the same things as coding agents.
In order to cure cancer with AI, you would need to give it complete control over the experimental pipeline, including probably direct robotic access to a web lab, which comes with its own set of risks. It's just not the same problem space as coding at all.
If that ends up being true, they should be very surprised.
We're looking at ~$725B combined hyperscaler capex in 2026 (on a path to $1.08T by 2028) against roughly $25B of AI service revenue in 2025 on $250B+ of infrastructure spend. By 2030, the global data center build-out will require $6.7 trillion in capital expenditure. If hyperscalers require a 25% return on AI-specific capex, the industry needs to generate ~$169B in AI-attributable revenue annually by end of 2028.
A flexible compute market plus three well-capitalized competitors plus Google's internal silicon means nobody gets to hold price. SpaceX's public offering is the best signal we have on this type of thing and it's down 15% from offer price.
It's incredibly unlikely that BOTH OpenAI and Anthropic will be "obscenely" profitable in the next few years. Also very unlikely that even one will be "obscenely" profitable in the next few years.
It is more likely (but still not very) that they both will be simply profitable (not obscenely).
The most probable scenario is that ONE will be somewhat profitable (probably Anthropic) and the other still burning.
You know SpaceX is still publicly valued at $1.5T marketcap, right? (offering price has nothing to do with anything other than ego of founders/bankers).
Yes, I will wait for the correct valuation when all stocks enter the liquidity pool.
OpenAI/Anthropic obscenely profitable is an easy bet (for me)
Seems unlikely. All three market leaders have roughly equivalent products, even ignoring the Chinese models. Google is better vertically integrated, as well. They'll end up competing on price, or worst case capacity rationing.
The thing with drug discovery is that the bottleneck is not coming up with new molecules, etc. It's the multi-year, extremely expensive clinical trials that often don't even succeed. I doubt it will be a big moneymaker for Anthropic and OpenAI, because the best they can hope for is to sell a software product to pharma companies, but the pharma companies already have lots of scientists with a million promising molecules already in study they will never even make it to clinical trials.
In other words, can AI tech help? Probably, but I doubt it's going to be a major money maker, and it won't make a ton of money overnight. It's not like Claude Code where every programmer can begin using it instantly.
If you had asked HN 3 years ago what would code-generating market would be, they would have used the exact same reasoning and given us the opinion "Why no one will pay for glorified auto-complete"
Thr pharma parallel to what tech is doing is replacing clinical trials with AI review. Im not so sure its the same thing.
The idea that AI curing cancer, heart disease, aging (you get the idea) won't be a money maker because "clinical trials" is absurd. Of course it will be. Obviously it isn't the same thing as coding agents. But a lot of money makers aren't the same things as coding agents.
In order to cure cancer with AI, you would need to give it complete control over the experimental pipeline, including probably direct robotic access to a web lab, which comes with its own set of risks. It's just not the same problem space as coding at all.
OpenAI and Anthropic can't do either of those if they go bankrupt first.
People are going to be surprised by how obscenely profitable both will be in a couple of years
If that ends up being true, they should be very surprised.
We're looking at ~$725B combined hyperscaler capex in 2026 (on a path to $1.08T by 2028) against roughly $25B of AI service revenue in 2025 on $250B+ of infrastructure spend. By 2030, the global data center build-out will require $6.7 trillion in capital expenditure. If hyperscalers require a 25% return on AI-specific capex, the industry needs to generate ~$169B in AI-attributable revenue annually by end of 2028.
A flexible compute market plus three well-capitalized competitors plus Google's internal silicon means nobody gets to hold price. SpaceX's public offering is the best signal we have on this type of thing and it's down 15% from offer price.
It's incredibly unlikely that BOTH OpenAI and Anthropic will be "obscenely" profitable in the next few years. Also very unlikely that even one will be "obscenely" profitable in the next few years.
It is more likely (but still not very) that they both will be simply profitable (not obscenely).
The most probable scenario is that ONE will be somewhat profitable (probably Anthropic) and the other still burning.
You know SpaceX is still publicly valued at $1.5T marketcap, right? (offering price has nothing to do with anything other than ego of founders/bankers).
Yes, I will wait for the correct valuation when all stocks enter the liquidity pool.
OpenAI/Anthropic obscenely profitable is an easy bet (for me)
Seems unlikely. All three market leaders have roughly equivalent products, even ignoring the Chinese models. Google is better vertically integrated, as well. They'll end up competing on price, or worst case capacity rationing.
Tight competition and "obscenely profitable" rarely go hand-in-hand.
This essentially requires tripling the entire tech sector's share of the economy in a few years.
Wasn't this also predicted a couple years ago?
if open models get banned
I love this kind of optimized-for-Xitter drive-by market analysis. Very 2026.
I love how HN ignores past execution results
I like how someone can ignore that DeepMind invented AlphaFold, while OpenAI and Anthropic have zero experience shipping AI protein folding.
This entire industry might be hopelessly tribalist, nowadays.
the word delightful has lost all meaning to me
It's way too early to pick winners. This industry is still in the opening moves.
For example, today, investors are celebrating Microsoft's Azure growth as evidence that its AI investments are paying off: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110965>