A major problem faced by first-mover companies like OpenAI is that they spend an enormous amount of money on basic research and initial marketing and hardware purchases to set up in the first place. Those expenses become debts and have to be paid off by the business later. If they were to go bankrupt and sell off ChatGPT to some other company for pennies on the dollar that new owner would be in a much better position to be profitable.

There is clearly an enormous demand for AI services, despite all the “nobody wants this” griping you may hear in social media bubbles. That dermand’s not going to disappear and the AIs themselves won’t disappear. It’s just a matter of finding the right price to balance things out.