Meta 免费 Muse Agent 与 OpenAI 百元 Dots 的成本之争
Meta 免费放出 Muse Agent，OpenAI 三周后上线每月 100 美元的 Dots，作者分析两者商业模式与算力成本差异。
Meta gives its AI agent away for free. OpenAI launched theirs 21 days later at $100 a month. Same product category, opposite prices, and only one of these companies can afford to lose money on agents. Here's the economics underneath. Every dot runs on its own cloud computer and keeps working after you close the laptop. That single design choice breaks the subscription math that built ChatGPT. A chatbot costs OpenAI money when you type. A dot costs them money while you sleep. Meta can eat that bill. The ad machine did $59.4 billion last quarter, roughly $650 million a day, and WhatsApp hands Muse to billions of people with zero acquisition cost. An agent that reads your inbox and books your flights feeds the targeting engine. Muse can run at a loss forever because it makes the profitable thing more profitable. OpenAI has no money printer standing behind its agents. The agent is the revenue line. So dots shipped behind the $100 Pro tier, in select markets only, three weeks after Meta set the price of entry at zero. One detail worth checking yourself. Meta's "free" tier requires a credit card at signup and shows a meter counting down your usage. Free with a countdown timer is a trial with better branding. The WiFi was never the expensive part.