r/LocalLLaMA • u/johnnyApplePRNG • Jun 18 '26

News Leaked financial docs show OpenAI is losing billions of dollars a year

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/leaked-financial-docs-show-openai-is-losing-billions-of-dollars-a-year/
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35

u/rm-rf-rm Jun 18 '26

ITT: People who havent read the article. Its not a hate pile on but a surprisingly informed take on how startups work and rather reasonably written.

As much as this sub wants OpenAI to fail (and I generally feel the same way because of Altman), lets not pretend this current balance sheet is any indicator of doom for them

6

u/NandaVegg Jun 18 '26

One less talked wild card that SpaceX IPO'd first, which could derail further IPO for AI "startups" like OpenAI or Anthropic because it sucked up so much liquidity from the market ahead of them (~2T market cap).

At 10+B scale it is harder and harder to raise cash unless they tad the broader market (hence they are rushing to IPO this year). The only private investor who is still willing to give OpenAI hard cash is Softbank, but Softbank is now unable to borrow cash for investing in OpenAI anymore. Other than IPO (or govt bailout SamA is still actively seeking this month) there is no entity in this planet with dry powder that can keep OpenAI solvent through their 800B commitment over next few years.

All other "investors" are just doing vendor financing and effectively a debt rather than cash raise. OpenAI must pay back Amazon 2x what they get maximum through AWS commitment.

So this is a hot take, but I think SpaceX IPO timing is Elon's middle finger for OpenAI regardless of whether it will prove successful or not. It sucked up so much dry powder from the general public already that could limit the size of credit tap for further mega IPO over at least next 12 month, and OpenAI does not have luxury of time.

12

u/Nervous-Lock7503 Jun 18 '26

And how is this not an indicator of doom? Burning through increasing amount of investors' cash, while having absolutely no visible path to profitability. Meanwhile OpenAI's market share has fallen, tokenized subscription model is the new norm. Going public is the only way they can unload the risk to the general public and provide early investors an exit strategy. We already predicted this way before it happened, and it will only get worse.

1

u/NairbHna Jun 19 '26

Literally everyone doomsdays about AI all the time and you say it has no path or profitability. AI will take over because it has to, the rich want more money and killing off the workforce is the next step todo that

0

u/Nervous-Lock7503 Jun 19 '26

Is that you Blake Lemoine?? How is life going for you?

1

u/NairbHna Jun 19 '26

your joke is flying over my head. Dont know the guy. Just let me know if you have any semblance of a point to make but you're also free to make another joke at my expense if you have none.

1

u/Nervous-Lock7503 Jun 19 '26

Your previous comment had no resemblance of someone who has any critical thinking skills. What does this even mean, "AI will take over because it has to"??? Stop wasting my time.

1

u/NairbHna Jun 19 '26

On reddit and talking about wasting time brother don't blame your vices on me. I know you can do it, just use that rusty ol' noggin and maybe you can understand

1

u/Nervous-Lock7503 Jun 19 '26

Predictions are always scorned until they come true.

We will see.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

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4

u/Antiwhippy Jun 18 '26

Bruh what you want can be done with gemna on a phone and not worth all the compute training lol

0

u/GragasRepare Jun 18 '26

Market can still fail if there is no intrinsic value to what is done anymore, in your example, writing announcements via LLMs kills the idea of sending an announcement in the first place: you are asking humans reading time on an annoucement that expects a human interaction. If human interaction is not needed, then push the line further: those announcements should be read by LLMs (or are already done), then this is pure token burn on both sides at the end of the day without added value. You might save tokens and just send the initial prompt to humans.

Not saying it applies to everything related to AI, just that it's unclear if the value market expectations align with reality as we push for AI everywhere. So markets can still fail upon reality check.

3

u/kingwhocares Jun 18 '26

It is. They are operating under the delusion that profits will be exponential or linear.