Following a recent episode of the All-In podcast, I think of it like this. Until this year, the people who were actually making money from the AI economy were the ones who make the hardware. In the wake of the AI coding revolution (the enterprise demand for Claude Code and its rivals), now the models are making money as well. The next step would be for the tokens to make money—that is, for the businesses who are paying for AI to write code, to actually profit from doing so.
I think, like a lot of what gets said on the All-In Podcast, this doesn’t make much sense.
The models aren’t yet making money. These companies are still cash-flow negative, and I am not expecting that to change for a while, at least another few months.
As for the tokens themselves making money, I think this is pretty ridiculous, but even taking them at their word, the companies that are buying tokens are already making money from them. Claude Code usage thus far has been incredibly subsidized by VC dollars and companies wouldn’t be paying for the tokens if they weren’t helping them make money. Companies aren’t paying for tokens just to get their employees used to coding with them. They are already making money from using AI (allbeit, a little).
Following a recent episode of the All-In podcast, I think of it like this. Until this year, the people who were actually making money from the AI economy were the ones who make the hardware. In the wake of the AI coding revolution (the enterprise demand for Claude Code and its rivals), now the models are making money as well. The next step would be for the tokens to make money—that is, for the businesses who are paying for AI to write code, to actually profit from doing so.
I think, like a lot of what gets said on the All-In Podcast, this doesn’t make much sense.
The models aren’t yet making money. These companies are still cash-flow negative, and I am not expecting that to change for a while, at least another few months.
As for the tokens themselves making money, I think this is pretty ridiculous, but even taking them at their word, the companies that are buying tokens are already making money from them. Claude Code usage thus far has been incredibly subsidized by VC dollars and companies wouldn’t be paying for the tokens if they weren’t helping them make money. Companies aren’t paying for tokens just to get their employees used to coding with them. They are already making money from using AI (allbeit, a little).