> Hardware hasn't been improving at a rapid rate

Yes it has. GPUs and consumer hardware today is much faster than it was 5 years ago and it will be much faster again in 5 years.

> and clearly these companies are losing money and burning investor cash at a ridiculous rate

As every startup should.

The inference is not losing money. I don’t know if you missed it, but it was revealed a while ago that they’re actually making decent money on inference.