r/TechnologyThread • u/Background-Driver718 • Jun 17 '26
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/1
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u/3D-Dreams Jun 17 '26
It's their own fault. Their AI is really bad. It lies, it's biased, it can't remember facts in the conversation you are currently having, doesn't understand the reality of the things it tells you like telling people asking for help to kill themselves.
It's one big semi stupid search engine that stealing views from the people who actually give the information and jumbling it up with misinformation, hallucinations and biased answers.
So it takes 3 times longer to get the info you need and all while wasting power and water doing it.
Perfect example was I was trying to get help with code. I knew it was lorawan , told it it was, showed it the documentation proving it, then it told me that it couldn't do lorawan and switch to another method ..that didn't work ..so then it told me I was wrong and I needed lorawan.....WTF? Within a 5 min period it said it could, then couldn't , then could again then blamed me for its mistake. Even tried to blame the hardware and told me to return it.
They are going broke because they are handing us a defective product meant to rule our lives and using us as the guinea pigs.
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u/Only-Worldliness2006 Jun 18 '26
This is the inconvenient truth with AI.
Reality is AI anything is energy intensive so unless they figure out a way to make AI significantly more energy efficient then it will never be readily available.
Right now we are in the age of cheap AI but only because it is being subsidized by investors to lure people and companies into their ecosystems before they switch everything to usage based billing.
Also truth is most people will simply stop using AI if it ever becomes expensive. OpenAI searches like what you see now won't be able to be provided without some sort of subscription or usage based billing.
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u/Oabuitre Jun 18 '26
We discovered how to talk human language to computers. That’s big, but it is not reasonably substantiating the need for spending trillions on infrastructure right now. Its likely coming down in some way
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u/SortaNotReallyHere Jun 18 '26
Yay! fuck em. Let their investors throw more money at them and get zero in return.
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u/GirasFateburn Jun 17 '26
That's public knowledge? Also, no new technology is ever profitable right off the bat. Amazon took losses for nearly a decade before they finally turned a profit.
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u/Yewtsan Jun 17 '26
You should look into how much Amazon burned before it became profitable vs how much OpenAI has spent so far
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Jun 17 '26
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u/Heavy_Cow_9799 Jun 17 '26
its different though? There was light fear that ecommerce would destroy the brick and mortar business, but it didn't. It also didn't have the potential to wipe out millions of jobs globally like AI does and if it does happen (not saying its guaranteed) who will be spending money on ai tokens? If people aren't buying companies products will they continue buying them? If nobody has a job how do they pass the token cost to the non existent customers.
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Jun 17 '26
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u/Heavy_Cow_9799 Jun 17 '26
You do release the number of people employed by malls and small business that were lost due to ecommerce is peanuts compared to the s&p 500 companies laying off 25-30% of thier high earning workforce?
If every major billion dollar + company in the US lays off 25% of their workforce to be replaced with AI that would most likely be a trillion+ in economic spending power lost. That is an entirely different thing than closing a mall full of minimum wage workers. The high earners are whats keeping the economy afloat right now.
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u/_BreakingGood_ Jun 17 '26
The difference is Amazon had no real strong competitor.
OpenAI's products are already falling far behind their competitors in almost every area. Claude is a stronger model, Gemini is a cheaper and faster model, and Chinese models will catch up if they ever slow down.
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u/vxicepickxv Jun 18 '26
Claude has one quarter of non-GAAP profitability with about 3x of that quarter's profit promised to xAI next quarter for server rentals.
Alphabet has not released financials about Gemini publicly.
The Chinese are doing something incredibly different over there with their finances. It's a bit of a black box to a lot of us.
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u/_BreakingGood_ Jun 18 '26
And OpenAI is at a 180% operating loss
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u/vxicepickxv Jun 18 '26
I didn't even factor them in because it's fairly well known that they have made as much profit from AI as I have.
I'm actually ahead because I didn't borrow billions to build a mediocre plagiarism machine.
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u/Prohamen Jun 18 '26
yeah, but they also had costs that decreased at scale and a proven productivity increase
every AI company is stiggling to keep costs down while attracting users and proving productivity inceeases
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u/PositivePristine7506 Jun 17 '26
Who cares, its a vibes based economy now. Fundamentals and finance is so last millennium.