The AI industry’s race for profits is now existential

Major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic face a "monetization cliff" where they must become profitable soon or risk collapse, since they've received hundreds of billions in investment but haven't generated enough revenue to justify those costs. AI agents (software programs that can perform tasks autonomously) consume far more computing power than expected, forcing these companies to make difficult choices like killing unprofitable products and restricting free access to conserve resources for their upcoming initial public offerings (IPOs, when companies sell shares to the public for the first time).