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Comment by combobyte | Hacker News Reader

Those numbers intentionally exclude the single largest operating expense that Anthropic has: model training. [1]

So yeah, if they stop training models forever, Anthropic will probably start making a profit... until someone else with better models comes along to eat their lunch.

[1] https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2026091414/the-...

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In the discussion of a similar article, it was called PBBT - profit before bad things.

So... "revenue"?

I am not even sure that is true. We don’t know everything that is included or excluded from their calculation. I suspect there is a lot of funny math going on to get to profitability. Remember there was a lot of similar talks and reports about SpaceX and how profitable they were. The reality was much worse. I just don’t believe it until I see it in the S1. Even then they can hide quite a bit.

Or if model training is more of a rollercoaster, where spending gets you to the top of the hill where you create a massive internal model which can then build the next version of itself for cheaper and cheaper amounts relative to human R&D costs. If Anthropic is first over that hill, they can race far ahead.

Hence a company with a second revenue stream such as Google has an advantage, in my opinion

Advertizing is an amazingly durable and high margin business imho.

kind of puts it in 4K the reason behind "we must pace the frontier"

Maybe... just maybe companies find an equilibrium? Maybe companies reinvest in training because there's performance increase?

Hahaha here he is.

How confident are you that these firms are going to survive if they’re fudging the numbers?

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