With a ~40 billion usd hole (netloss) Openai keeps it´s word by staying a nonprofit company 🤣
I find it interesting that according to these numbers, if they entirely stopped R&D and marketing, they would just about break even.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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That's what they want you to think. This chart is especially egregious with calling it "cost of revenue" as if the other costs weren't just as necessary for their revenue. If they stop R&D in 2027, they won't have any revenue by 2028 because their models will be outdated and nobody will want to use them. R&D is simply cost of doing business.
If stopping R&D and marketing had no impact whatsoever on their future revenue.
Fat chance.
Oh definitely. I think it's anthropic who have stated in multiple interviews that they break even on most of their models, it's just that they keep spending exponentially more to train the next model. They and openai seem to be stuck in an arms race where switching to purely serving existing models to their existing clients just won't work. I do wonder how accurate that assessment is on their part.
There's also DeepSeek eating revenue that would go for those more "mature" models.
I think it's anthropic who have stated in multiple interviews that they break even on most of their models
Words are cheap pre IPO. I don't believe that for a second.
I'm noticing the way that last year's expenses get covered by this year's revenue. Maybe they'll try for some deal around that, and expect the bubble to last forever?
They're anti-profit lol
Don't you worry about profits, let ME worry about blank!
Ed's article where he released those numbers: https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
That page makes it look even better than it is. It's almost halfway to profitable, according to that. About 2/3 of that revenue is from Nvidia though, which is just selling the shovels for the gold rush speculation. It's not "AI profit" as if AI is producing something. It's just sales caused by people hoping it'll produce something in the future.
That's why you can click on “Hide infrastructure”, it then shows only $135B in revenue (for $1.2T spent).
Idk the source of that data but OMG look at anthropic, 6.5b revenue but recently "evaluated" ~1 trillion USD. Is that for real?
Yeah, all speculative.
"To the moon" you say? Take my money!
Ahahahahaha Facebook has dumped roughly the same amount of money into AI as Microsoft, but makes 1/10th the revenue. Pure gold
A very useful metric here would be a $/day to see if it's slowing down or speeding up.
It is updated once a month
What is?
It
The data on this website. You wouldn’t see a rate change more often than once a month.
Ok, then $/month for each company and also show a chart to see what the trend is.
What you said is incorrect though. The "data" on the website is changing constantly. What gets updated once per month is the rate at which these companies are burning money. It's not the same thing.
Btw, pro tip, lemmy doesn't charge per character or anything. You can write as many words as you like.
Said the guy/girl who didn’t even bother to read what the website says.. why should I spend my limited time typing out what they have already written?
See this paragraph:
I'll be updating these numbers monthly as new reports and financials drop.
Except that you're answering a question I never asked? I simply said that a $/month number over time would be useful. That is currently not on the website.
Maybe you should think about improving your reading comprehension skills before criticizing other people.
OpenAI is the definition of the difference between "Not-For-Profit" and "For not-profit".
This misapprehends the business models of techno feudalism: you operate at a loss, running on VC money which is fairly endless. You offer a freeish service to grow your brand. Then when you list on the stock exchange you live off debts loaned to you by the bank on the basis that your company is worth millions or billions.
I have no doubt ChatGPT is, and that Sam Altman lives with no taxable income to speak of. He's just accumulating bank loans and paying them back with other bank loans secured by OpenAIs growing stock price and company valuation.
Money isn't real to the elite classes. Actually I believe Stalin and Churchill once stopped at a Cafe sometime after WW2, they realised after their meal no one travelling with them had money on them to pay. Because they didn't need money. It's accepted when you're at that level. Welfare Capitalism has existed for a very very long time.
Which column is infrastructure under? Things like power, DC rent, etc. Also what about depreciation assuming you try to shove all that shit (well the hardware anyway) into CapEx?
Which column is infrastructure under?
I don't think they have any of that. They rent computation capacity, which should partially be under cost of revenue and partially under R&D.
Those techies might be able to create widgets but they're sure not competent businesspersons.
As real as any valuation. Which is to say, what investors are willing to pay for a piece of a company may not always have the most firm association with the reality of a company's current state. And, the market can stay irrational much longer than you expect.
What is “the cost of revenue”? Tax? Electricity supply?
Accounting equivalent of "Cost of Goods Sold" but for software and tech companies its usually a service so "cost of revenue" is the term used
They'll be profitable when the training stops/slows down. But how much revenue they can generate is another question. This might be the reason behind the news of US gov thinking about banning Deepsek and other Chinese models. Open weights models kill the API billing bussiness model. Margins in that scenario probably wouldn't cover the massive investment.
That's the problem, you can't stop training your model. New and useful information is created every day. This is simply not an economically viable product.
How are they supposed to “slow training down” without falling behind their competitors?
Competitors have the same problem. We'll see what happens once subsidies run out.
So the choice is between unprofitability and models being so out of date they become useless? Great.
🤣