Every bubble goes through this phase just before it pops. Pre-implosion Twitter had tons of folks doing useless “research” projects, WeWork had folks studying furniture design’s impact on wellbeing, and so on.
When you’re more worried about this sort of stuff vs generating profit then the history books strongly indicate that’s usually not a good omen of what’s coming next.
Not OP but I think the most obvious change will be rapid price increases as investors begin to demand profits - no more subsidised $20p/m plans for example.
So far I know, service providers hosting open-weight models are not in such a financial conundrum and can continue serving at the current price levels.
Also, even if the 20 dollar subs disappear, that just means regular folks can't afford AI. API pricing is still a great bargain for businesses replacing generic office workers.
Today's frontier models are strong enough to be useful even if no further progress is made. The knowledge cutoff is a bit inconvenient, but with web search and in context learning, it can pick up new library versions or programming languages just fine.
Sure, but if the companies start competing on price they become commodities and their valuations collapse, leading to knock-on effects everywhere (eg all the circular financing also collapses). I'm not saying this is a bad thing.
I agree that by what we are seeing so far, there is no magic secret sauce on the horizon. The tech is not super hard to understand and develop, such that hiring a few capable ex-employees of the big labs can help you build a new one. Any big step in capabilities has been quickly matched by the other labs so far, including agentic AI but also image and video generation.
Also, "circular financing" is a meme. A private company cannot create money, there is no circularity. NVIDIA may buy services from OpenAI and also sell them GPUs. If a lumberjack buys eggs from his neighbor and also sells him wood to improve his chicken coop, that's not circular financing, just business happening in both directions.
It's more like the lumberjack is lending money to the farmer so the farmer can buy his wood. (NVIDIA doesn't consume tokens). If the tokens (eggs) suddenly become much unprofitable then the AI labs aren't going to need as many GPUs (lumber for hen houses) and the borrowed money won't be paid back. Or perhaps more accurately, has even less chance of being paid back than it does now, which is not a high chance.
The numbers are staggering eg: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/nvidia-financing-open-ai-data-center-ohio.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/nvidia-financing-open-ai-dat...
That was not my point. I agree with you that producers of these models should be able to extract value from their models, I'm just surprised that everyone expects free models. There's a real cost in producing those.
> I'm just surprised that everyone expects free models. There's a real cost in producing those.
There's a lot of free stuff incurring "real costs" in its production, one more or less doesn't make a shred of difference.
> I agree with you that producers of these models should be able to extract value from their models.
Nobody is stopping them from extracting value but they fail despite being placed in a very advantageous position vis-a-vis others, which tells me, they should call it quits or go open like everybody sane.
Open is the way to go, nothing else works in the field of AI, that's the bitter lesson closed labs are yet to learn.
A little bit like electricity plants. Countries will nationalise for sovereignty reasons, as China already does probably. And that’s not bad for people given current trajectory.
cmiles8 · · focus · HN ↗
When you’re more worried about this sort of stuff vs generating profit then the history books strongly indicate that’s usually not a good omen of what’s coming next.
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
ymhr · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
Also, even if the 20 dollar subs disappear, that just means regular folks can't afford AI. API pricing is still a great bargain for businesses replacing generic office workers.
ako · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
f6v · · focus · HN ↗
jckahn · · focus · HN ↗
rwmj · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
Also, "circular financing" is a meme. A private company cannot create money, there is no circularity. NVIDIA may buy services from OpenAI and also sell them GPUs. If a lumberjack buys eggs from his neighbor and also sells him wood to improve his chicken coop, that's not circular financing, just business happening in both directions.
ako · · focus · HN ↗
rwmj · · focus · HN ↗
The numbers are staggering eg: <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/nvidia-financing-open-ai-data-center-ohio.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/nvidia-financing-open-ai-dat...
bigbadfeline · · focus · HN ↗
Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about it.
toddmorey · · focus · HN ↗
ako · · focus · HN ↗
bigbadfeline · · focus · HN ↗
There's a lot of free stuff incurring "real costs" in its production, one more or less doesn't make a shred of difference.
> I agree with you that producers of these models should be able to extract value from their models.
Nobody is stopping them from extracting value but they fail despite being placed in a very advantageous position vis-a-vis others, which tells me, they should call it quits or go open like everybody sane.
Open is the way to go, nothing else works in the field of AI, that's the bitter lesson closed labs are yet to learn.
solenoid0937 · · focus · HN ↗
cgio · · focus · HN ↗