Unit economics vs. the singularity

Published on July 14, 2026 4:06 PM GMTThis is a condensed version of the essay linked above.Not long ago, it was fashionable to ask “how would the AI labs ever turn a profit?” In theory, ever-increasing training costs would swallow all revenue, as labs compete to stay at the frontier. If a lab stopped training better models, their competitors would catch up, undercut them and take their market share. A lose-lose.Anthropic is poised to prove a lab can be profitable. However, if progress slows, lo...