alt Hacker NewsThank you for being explicit with the math!
So yes, at that speed for sure. But if the speed goes up? or the ability to batch at the same speed goes up? The economics start to shift. The gap is much closer, and you'd end up with a box you can still use or sell later.
Subscription pricing is still the best though!
As speed goes up the cost / Mtoken will necessarily go down at roughly the same ratio so it will wash out. The still use hardware or sell hardware value is factored in to the amortized monthly cost, it assumes a 3 year markdown, and does not factor in the cost of money which should almost cancel the resale value in the end, which I think is quite accurate (any residual cost on a graphics card after 3 years is so small compared to the current price it should be discounted and in included there).
Where you might win by owning your own hardware: - Hardware costs go up, and thus api costs go up. You've locked in your pricing. - Chinese/Open models become illegal/hard to access the way we do now. OpenAI and Anthropic are trying very hard to build a regulatory capture scheme to do this. I think they will be unsuccessful because China just won't participate.