I'm curious why such a large gap exists between our numbers. My hypotheses are:

A. The average utilization rate of inference GPU cards is not that high (i.e. it peaks during the daytime, but is idle at night). So the time window for earning $38/h is fairly limited.

B. They are renting costly GPU capacity from 3rdparty hyperscalers because they can't meet the peak demand with their own hardware.

C. Free-tier users are eating the gross margin.

D. Subscription users are eating the gross margin.

Another observable point is that DeepSeek's company-wide gross margin was reportedly 44.6%. It's intriguing what the full picture looks like here.