I don't doubt that it is true that they lose money on a 200 subscription because the people that pay 200 are probably the same people that will max out usage over time, no matter how wasteful. Sam Altman was framing it in a way to say "it's so useful people are using it more than we expected!", because he is interested in having everyone believe that LLMs are the future. It's all bullshit.

If I had to guess, they probably at least break even on API calls, and might make some money on lower tier subscriptions (i.e.: people that pay for it but use it sparingly on a as-need basis).

But that is boring, and hints at limited usability. Investors won't want to burn hundreds of billions in cash for something that may be sort of useful. They want destructive amounts of money in return.

And this isn't something that will go away anytime soon. OpenAI for instance is projecting that in 2030 R&D will still account for 45% of their costs. They think they'll be profitable by that time, or so they're telling investors.