A $20/Month OpenAI User Costs $65 in Compute — Sora AI Video Is a Money Furnace

Substack·medium signal

A detailed cost analysis on Substack calculates that each $20/month OpenAI subscriber costs the company approximately $65 in compute, with AI video generation (Sora) being the most extreme money-losing product. The post garnered 75 HN points and 42 comments. The analysis highlights the unsustainable unit economics of current AI subscription models, particularly as multimodal capabilities like video generation scale usage far beyond text-based compute budgets.