the big tech companies needing to pump demand for compute.
Demand is already so large that OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google could not fill it. Tokenmaxxing for these companies strictly to pump fake demand is just plain wrong. The inference demand for these companies internally must be a drop in a bucket in overall inference demand.
This reminds me of the popular opinion on HN for return to office mandates as executives wanting to recover their real estate investments.
Out of $13Bln of 2025 revenue, OpenAI received $867 million from one customer (less charitably, one bankroller), SoftBank. And $300 million from Microsoft[0]. That's more than a drop in the bucket, especially given that they're not the only players complicit in being both an investor and a customer.
Also are we sure it's all at arm's length? Barring a full audit, it's not possible to guarantee that there's no round-tripping or overstating of revenue. With Microsoft also being a provider for OpenAI, they could be creatively using set-off, or using SG&A, in order to overstate their revenue/gross margin/inference profit margin. I of course have no proof, extraordinary claims etc. etc. It's unlikely but we should at least debate the possibility. They have such a huge collective incentive to do it.
This reminds me of the popular opinion on HN for return to office mandates as executives wanting to recover their real estate investments.