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eek2121yesterday at 11:58 PM2 repliesview on HN

Also: a large amount of folks seem to think Claude code is losing a ton of money. I have no idea where the final numbers land, however, if the $20,000 figure is accurate and based on some of the estimates I've seen, they could've hired 8 senior level developers at a quarter million a year for the same amount of money spent internally.

Granted, marketing sucks up far too much money for any startup, and again, we don't know the actual numbers in play, however, this is something to keep in mind. (The very same marketing that likely also wrote the blog post, FWIW).


Replies

GorbachevyChasetoday at 12:45 AM

Even if the dollar cost for product created was the same, the flexibility of being able to spin a team up and down with an API call is a major advantage. That AI can write working code at all is still amazing to me.

willsmith72today at 12:11 AM

this doesn't add up. the 20k is in API costs. people talk about CC losing money because it's way more efficient than the API. I.e. the same work with efficient use of CC might have cost ~$5k.

but regardless, hiring is difficult and high-end talent is limited. If the costs were anywhere close to equivalent, the agents are a no-brainer

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