Techcrunch reports that AI coding tools have "very negative" gross margins. In other words, they are losing money on every user.
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The usual business plan is to reinvest all earnings into growth. So you're losing money, but gaining market share. Tesla, Amazon, etc all did this. They could stop at any point and turn a profit, but they chose to pursue a growth instead.
AI companies are currently not making enough revenue to even cover their operating costs. Even so, they are pouring all of their money into more video cards that, once installed and configured, immediately start losing money.
I don't think they're gaining any market share, especially after the Chinese produced nearly identical services.
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Exclusive: The high costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups
Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials.
TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
Man I cannot fucking wait until this stupid goddamn bubble pops
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I don't think they're gaining any market share, especially after the Chinese produced nearly identical services.
If anything, a smaller market share is better for business. The more users they have the faster they lose money.
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Man I cannot fucking wait until this stupid goddamn bubble pops
Me too. I can then go back to 3D printing quantum blockchains out of room temperature superconductors in my private space station with Katy Perry.
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in this case there isnt customer base for AI, only ceo and c-suites are.
There is a lot of top down shit, but there is definitely bunch non c-suite enterprise customers out there. A lot of product managers are curious about this shit.
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So much of the AI stuff we see today are boards reacting and worrying about being "left behind" in AI. In many cases, the goal is not to deliver value. The goal is to be able to attach a little sticker that says "AI" to their products to excite the shareholders.
Unfortunately in this case, some of the largest companies in the world haven't been able to figure out how to run AI services at a profit.
This could change any day if some more efficient hardware arrives, but until then, most of the software world is just crossing their fingers it becomes profitable one day while they light dollar bills on fire in their datacenters.
If this isn't "bubbleish" behavior I don't know what is.
I was in a local bike store looking at red tail lights yesterday.
One brand Lezyne had several versions. There was an "AI Alert" one. I looked it up and it just has a sensor to detect when you brake and it changes to a different flashing mode at that time.
Thats barely even "smart" let alone "AI".
The stupid thing is, because of this dumb claim they needed to confirm that it doesn't collect and transmit any data about your riding habits. Its a light with no connectivity other than a charging port.
The dumbfuckery is astonishing.
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This post did not contain any content.
Exclusive: The high costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups
Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials.
TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
So what I am learning is that I should start vibe coding even the small scripts that are less than 10 lines.
Done. I will start doing that.
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I'd suspect the low "density" of context makes it prone to hallucinations. You need to load in 3000 lines to express what Python does in 3, so there's a lot of chances to guess the next token wtong.
I was gonna say that, probably the higher the abstraction level the best it is for LLMs to reason about the code, because once learned it’s less tokens.
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If anything, a smaller market share is better for business. The more users they have the faster they lose money.
Nobody asked
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Me too. I can then go back to 3D printing quantum blockchains out of room temperature superconductors in my private space station with Katy Perry.
I find that hard to believe right up until the point you mentioned Katy.