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Inference is not the main cost driver, training and research is.


I'm not sure that's still the case. It used to be the case, but I doubt it continues to be. OpenAI had $6.7 BN costs for the first half of 2025. I doubt they spent $3 BN in training and research. They have 700 million weekly users, and many of these users are really heavy users. Just taking myself: I probably consumed a few million tokens with GPT-5-Codex in the last 3 days alone. I am a heavy user, but I think there are users who burn through hundreds of times more tokens than me.


Absolutely not true.




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