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A comment on Is it a bubble?. Parent comment

Re:Is it a bubble? by its_ethan on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @06:47PM (#46225726)
Is it not sort of implied by the stats later: "Revenues from Claude Code, a program for coding that Anthropic introduced earlier this year, already are said to be running at an annual rate of $1 billion. Revenues for the other leader, Cursor, were $1 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024, and they, too, are expected to reach $1 billion this year."

Surely that revenue is coming from people using the services to generate code? Right?

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Re:Is it a bubble? by Windchaser on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @07:12PM (#46225962)
A back-of-the-napkin estimate of software developer salaries:

There are some ~1.5 million software developers in the US per BLS data, or ~4 million if using a broader definition Median salary is $120-140k. Let's say $120k to be conservative.

This puts total software developer salaries at $180 billion.

So, that puts $1 billion in Claude revenue in perspective; only about 0.5% of software developer salaries. Even if it only improved productivity 5%, it'd be paying for itself handily - which means we can't take the $1 billion in revenues to indicate that it's providing a big boost in productivity.

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Re:Is it a bubble? by lovich on Thursday December 11, 2025 @12:05AM (#46227884)
You are ignoring costs

The AI companies are currently lighting dollars on fire if you pay them a few pennies to do so.

The AI models are actually accomplishing something, but the unit economics aren't there to support it being profitable

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Re:Is it a bubble? by dmurvihill on Thursday December 11, 2025 @02:43AM (#46228714)
If it makes a 5% improvement, that would make it a $9 billion dollar per year industry. What’s our projected capex for AI projects next five years again?
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Re:Is it a bubble? by browningstreet on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @07:00PM (#46225854)
Generating code isn’t the same as running it, running it on production, and living with it over time.

In time I’m sure it will, but it’s still early days, land grab time.

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Re:Is it a bubble? by halfcat on Wednesday December 10, 2025 @07:20PM (#46226022)
> Surely that revenue is coming from people using the services to generate code? Right?

Yes. And all code is tech debt. Now generated faster than ever.

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Re:Is it a bubble? by jv22222 on Thursday December 11, 2025 @02:07AM (#46228518)
Hmm maybe that’s a bit reductive? I’ve used claud to help with some really great refactoring sessions tbh.
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