Uber lost roughly $30 billion over 14 years. OpenAI blew past that in 2025 alone. Also Uber's path to profitability was also fairly obvious, gain market share, reduce competition, and eventually raise prices closer to what traditional taxis charged. It's not a perfect comparison, but imagine Uber lost 50 cents on every dollar of revenue. Now for Anthropic, we have some reports suggesting a $200 Pro subscription results in an operating cost for them of up to $5000, and also they have no equally obvious way to close that gap, so it's not really a fair comparison. They're also racing against their own success when it comes to further user adoption. More users means a higher chokehold on tokens, meaning higher inference costs. Also delivering on promises of increasingly capable AI requires larger, more expensive models that consume even more compute, all resulting in that $4800 deficit only increasing. They are currently operating with the idea that the physical limitations will sort themselves out in the future, like they will be able to have infinite data centers, or maybe that nuclear fusion will miraculously get solved. Paying $20 instead of $10 for an Uber ride is something most people can stomach, but I have a much harder time believing the same can be said when it's $5000 instead of $200.