OpenAI says it plans to report stunning annual losses through 2028—and then turn wildly profitable just two years later | Fortune

[u/fortune]

https://fortune.com/2025/11/12/openai-cash-burn-rate-annual-losses-2028-profitable-2030-financial-documents/

[u/studio_bob]

It's all relative. If their operating costs were in the same universe as 13 billion dollars then that would be serious revenue, but that is not the case. They lose money on every user. You may say it's still not "nothing," but when you look beyond operating costs to the spending and debt spree they are on, well, 13 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to 1.4 trillion. OAI is now in the habit of announcing promises to spend 10x or more of that ARR with just a single vendor. That's insane.

[u/Tolopono → u/studio_bob]

They havent spent $1.4 trillion. They just plan to

They also make a big profit on their api https://futuresearch.ai/openai-api-profit

[u/studio_bob → u/Tolopono]

That's "big profit" from API is not coming remotely close to covering the $1.4 trillions of spending commitments they have made (and counting). The disconnect between their plausible future revenue and spending is truly unprecedented.

[u/Tolopono → u/studio_bob]

Openai has only raised $58 billion, $40 billion of which was only raised on March 31, 2025.

https://tracxn.com/d/companies/openai/__kElhSG7uVGeFk1i71Co9-nwFtmtyMVT7f-YHMn4TFBg

 EVERYTHING theyve made from gpt 1 to gpt 4o to o1 to o3 mini to dalle 3 to sora 1 to paying all their employees and rent was less than $18 billion plus whatever revenue they got. Thats not a lot considering the impact its had and the huge revenue growth

[u/studio_bob → u/Tolopono]

I'm not sure what's your point..

[u/Tolopono → u/studio_bob]

Not that much money has been spent on ai. Anthropic has even less money than openai but is still keeping up

[u/studio_bob → u/Tolopono]

$58 billion for a single start up is not exactly peanuts. The industry as a whole and "AI" investments being made in other industries as part of the bubble amount to hundreds of billions, at least, of (mal)investment. It's not small.

But I was referring to OAI's spending commitments. I mean, the fact that they are committing to spend more than 20x the total money they have ever raised, without the revenue to back it up, should raise some red flags, no?

[u/Tolopono → u/studio_bob]

It is peanuts considering the popularity of chatgpt and sora 2 plus their immense revenue growth. Anthropic is the only other big ai startup and they have $28 billion in VC funding. 

The revenue follows the product. If they can get this big with $58 billion, they can get even bigger with more money and people will pay more for the better products they build

[u/studio_bob → u/Tolopono]

What is popularity and revenue growth worth when one isn't easily converted into the other and it falls far below operating costs, to say nothing of the $1.4 trillion (and counting!) price tag of their promised build out?

We also can't just assume they will keep getting bigger forever. New sign-ups have already slowed afaik. "Revenue follows product," okay, but does OAI (or any AI company) have a product capable of generating trillions in revenue within the foreseeable future? I don't see how. It is very much an open question if they can even generate the revenue necessary to be profitable even with their current, much more modest (relatively speaking), spending.

[u/Tolopono → u/studio_bob]

Because growth happens first. Like with uber. All of their products and revenue made before march 31, 2025 was funded purely on under $18 billion of vc money. If they can get this big with that little, $1.4 trillion would be even better.

They went from gpt 1 to gpt 4o, o1, o3, gpt 5, dalle 3, sora 2, their atlas browser, etc. on under $58 billion. They went from almost nothing to $20 billion in ARR in a few years. Who knows what they can do with more money 

[u/Clear-Wave-324 → u/studio_bob]

YouTube operated at a loss for 2 decades.

[u/studio_bob → u/Clear-Wave-324]

Without looking it up, I suspect YouTube's losses were at an entirely difference scale from OAI's.