The Unsustainable Subsidy | Tomasz Tunguz

Tomasz Tunguz<br>Venture Capitalist at Theory Ventures

Google&rsquo;s AI triples in price each year.

OpenAI&rsquo;s flagship model was seemingly subsidized for a while, before rising again.

Anthropic&rsquo;s AI has been the same price for a little bit & decreased for the most powerful models.

Those are three very different pricing strategies. If we compare the absolutes, the data completes the picture.

Vendor<br>Model<br>Input ($/1M)<br>Output ($/1M)

Google<br>Gemini 3.1 Pro<br>$2.00<br>$12.00

Anthropic<br>Claude Opus 4.7<br>$5.00<br>$25.00

OpenAI<br>GPT-5.5<br>$5.00<br>$30.00

Google remains the low-cost player, increasing the price on all its models but still less than half of the competition. Anthropic had maintained a luxe pricing until late last year.

The pricing changes indicate changes in strategy : cuts when cash is plentiful & share matters. Increases when cash is tight & margins matter. The latter is the case for all three vendors now when capex spending continues to set records.

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GP at Theory Ventures. Former Google PM. Sharing data-driven insights on AI, web3, & venture capital.

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