The subsidies went away gradually and the prices leveled out in a spot where the services are heavily used. Uber became profitable. Ride sharing is affordable.
I think our $20/month plans might become a little less generous and the $200/month plan won’t always allow non-stop vibe coding, but I don’t think the prices are going to rise so much that users are priced out. Like Uber, customers will grumble for a while and then adapt to the new normal.
The big difference is that compute hardware is getting better. I think we might overshoot with data center buildouts to the point that compute becomes cheap, while hardware improvements continue to lower the cost of serving models. Over time the same service becomes cheaper to operate, opposite of Uber where driver wages are creeping upward.
Akin to an average cellphone bill. The infrastructure costs are comparable and the ROI would be 5-10 years for the current insane build out.
Yes, chinese and local models exist. But so do $20 cell phone plans. People go with what is convenient, works, and is readily available.
Where? You get unlimited mobile plans for like 10-20 euros in Europe
I mean surely to make this claim, you aren't just making it up, surely you've done the research. In that case, what's so hard about sharing facts which you already know? I'm not asking you to put in a bunch of effort pulling financial statements and analyzing everything, I assume you've already done that because I doubt you'd make the claim otherwise.
My "priors" are that I raised a search fund and analyze companies every day.
Using AI to write my software just takes all the fun out of it for me.
It feels like just reading a summary or recap instead of reading the actual full novel myself. Like it defeats the whole purpose of it. I write software because it's fun and it stimulates my mind and teaches me things and improves my skills.
Basically yes but there is a small difference I think. Things like Uber took an existing and proven business model. slapped an App on top and priced the competition out of the market. The winner takes it all.
With "AI" it's not yet clear if there will be any winner at all because it's not yet proven if the business model is viable at the "real" price. Think air taxis across town, 5$ a ride, will work at scale for sure, probably won't work for 500$.
It's hard to imagine a bright future for either company. The more hopeful analog might be Coca Cola & Pepsi. Both have a commodity product, but due to distribution networks and brand, they command a price premium. But it doesn't seem much fun to provide a high-volume low-margin commodity.
A better comparison is with how much PC costs went down during the 80’s due to IBM clones and Moore’s law.
You could imagine a Moore’s Law-esque cheapening of the tech that coincides with the business raising their prices. That might look like a continuation of simply “using the tools” on the surface, but on the inside it would spell a gradual, meaningful increase in margin
SubQ was validated by at least one third party, not sure if we'll see more confirmation, but 5x cheaper costs is worth it. None of the frontier models care enough about cutting costs of their models, only being the best in benchmarks.
The bright side is: this is a golden era of subsidized tokens. It will not always be like this, so now is the time to churn out your passion projects.