alt Hacker NewsDario has stated they made more from selling inference to Opus 3 than they did training it. Same with 3.5, 4.0 and I'm assuming 4.5 as well.
The reason they're losing money on paper is because the models keep growing 10x in size every generation but they're not getting 10x returns on model inference (closer to 2x)
I know what you’re quoting, but you've badly misread it.
Dario's point was the opposite of yours; he used per-model accounting to explain why the company P&L gets worse every year, not better. His own numbers (10x training costs each generation and ~2x revenue return.)…
"It looks like it's getting worse and worse" are his words, not mine.
In 2025, Anthropic's inference costs came in 23% over their own projections. They cut their gross margin forecast from 50% to 40%.