SemiAnalysis has calculated how big that gap really is. After testing subscription tiers from both OpenAI and Anthropic – running long-horizon coding and agentic tasks until weekly...
The actual cost to OpenAI is likely much less. The number in the article is calculating the API cost that a fully maxed out subscription would incur theoretically.
The API token cost, however, is far above the actual computational cost.
The actual price is hard to really know, but I think training should also factor in. The hype of LLMs is based on the fantastical idea of continunous improvement forever, so you need to keep training. Even ignoring the hype part, you still need to retrain simply to update the data inside the LLM.
I guess we’ll only know for sure after the crash/readjustment.
The actual cost to OpenAI is likely much less. The number in the article is calculating the API cost that a fully maxed out subscription would incur theoretically. The API token cost, however, is far above the actual computational cost.
The actual price is hard to really know, but I think training should also factor in. The hype of LLMs is based on the fantastical idea of continunous improvement forever, so you need to keep training. Even ignoring the hype part, you still need to retrain simply to update the data inside the LLM.
I guess we’ll only know for sure after the crash/readjustment.