They’re still in the first stage of enshittification: gaining market share. In fact, this is probably all just a marketing scheme. “Hi! I’m Crazy Sam Altman and my prices are SO LOW that I’m LOSING MONEY!! Tell your friends and subscribe now!”

A real ceo does everything. Delegation is for losers who can’t cope. Can’t move fast enough and break enough things if you’re constantly waiting for your lackeys to catch up.

If those numbers people were cleverer than the ceo, they’d be the ones in charge, and they aren’t. Checkmate. Do you even read Ayn Rand, bro?

In tech? Kinda yeah. When a subscription is 14.99 $£€/month it’s a clear “we just think it’s what people think is a fair price for SaaS”.

The trick is that tech usually works on really weird economics where the fixed costs (R&D) are astonishingly high and the marginal costs (servers etc) are virtually nil. That’s how successful tech companies are so profitable, even more than oil companies, because once the R&D is paid off every additional user is free money. And this means that companies don’t have to be profitable any time in particular as long as they promise sufficient projected growth to make up for being a money pit until then. You can get away with anything when your investors believe you’ll eventually have a billion users.

… Of course that doesn’t work when every customer interaction actually costs a buck or two in GPU compute, but I’m sure after a lot of handwaving they were able to explain to their investors how this is totally fine and totally sustainable and they’ll totally make their money back a thousandfold.