Ads.

Ads work when you can server $.01 worth of ads to a user for $.0001 of server cost. I fail to see how you can make it work when doing LLM inference which is significantly costlier than web search.

In about 4 months, OpenAI’s fundraiser decks will leak, which will include their current ad revenue.

90+% of queries are probably so common/evergreen that, if a cheaper model made all the different language varients and ways of asking the question into one query, they could be cached quite effectively.