Sep 9, 2026, 5:14 PMSilly question: if I use LLM _services_, who pays, who gets money?
At work, I assume my employer pays $chatgpt and $chatgpt pays idk nvidia and for energy, kinda?
But how does that work with non-subscription, public LLMs, e.g. the ones duckduckgo offers? Or what if $chatgpt has a public free tier? Does "using" them cost or benefit $chatgpt?
@grob You give the agent your credit card details (sadly, I'm not kidding)
Sep 9, 2026, 6:26 PM@wim_v12e you mean, if I register for a LLM provider I need to fill in payment info that gets sold? Or I get charged?
Not sure I understand your answer 😅
I was referring to free LLM services without registration if that makes sense. I think someone has to pay for those tokens, someone must benefit from them being used and paid for. Or is it all still a battle for market domination? In which case I'll happily burn tokens and a hole in Altman's bottom line. But am I though, or am I helping Sam?
@grob This is if you are using something like OpenClaw, which uses external services. It can for example book you a hotel room, but only if you provide your card details. Stripe has an API for this.
If a paid external service is used by the "LLM" itself (because those things are now also agents rather than pure LLMs), then of course the LLM service provider will need agreements with providers of those non-free services.
@grob In any case, if you use them, you are helping the AI company, even if they run the service at a loss, because you help with adoption.