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OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

economist.com

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Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#41

Post by wahnfrieden »

computerphage wrote: post #37
mvkel wrote: post #27

The fact is nobody has any idea what OpenAI's cash burn is. Measuring how much they're raising is not an adequate proxy. For all we know, they could be accumulating capital to weather an AI winter. It's also worth noting that OpenAI has not trained a new model since gpt4o (all subsequent models are routing systems and prompt chains built on top of 4), so the idea of OpenAI being stuck in some kind of runaway training…

Why do you think they have not trained a new model since 4o? You think the GPT-5 release is /just/ routing to differently sized 4o models?

they're incorrect about the routing statement but it is not a newly trained model

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#42

Post by esel2k »

adriand wrote: post #30

This article doesn’t add anything to what we know already. It’s still an open question what happens with the labs this coming year, but I personally think Anthropic’s focus on coding represents the clearest path to subscriber-based success (typical SaaS) whereas OpenAI has a clear opportunity with advertising. Both of these paths could be very lucrative. Meanwhile I expect Google will continue to struggle with making…

Where does google struggle to make products people don’t want to use? Is it a personal opinion?

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#43

Post by websiteapi »

candiddevmike wrote: post #13
websiteapi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would they do that? not to mention governments are already doing that indirectly by taking equity stakes in some of the companies.

Same reason they should own access lines: everyone needs rackspace/access, it should be treated like a public service to avoid rent seeing. Having a data center in every city where all of the local lines terminate into could open the doors to a lot of interesting use cases, really help with local resiliency/decentralization efforts, and provide a great alternative to cloud providers that doesn't break the bank.

should the government own all types of "public services"? e.g. search index, video serving infra, etc?

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#44

Post by Avicebron »

On the radio they mentioned that the total global chocolate market is ~100B, I googled it when I was home and it seems to be about ~135B. Apparently that is ... all chocolate, everywhere.. OpenAI's valuation is about 500B. Maybe going up to like 835B.

I'd love to see the rationale that OpenAI (not "AI" everywhere) is more valuable than chocolate globally.

... so crash early 2026?

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#45

Post by zdragnar »

inerte wrote: post #19
aucisson_masque wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d rather stay far away from this parallel universe. Why would you want my money to be used to build datacenter that won’t benefit me ? I might use a LLM once a month, many people never use it. Let the one who use it pay for it.

That's like every government initiative. Same as healthcare? School? I mean if you don't have children why do you pay taxes... and roads if you don't drive? I mean the examples are so many... why do you bring this argument that if it doesn't benefit you directly right now today, it shouldn't be done?

There are arguments aplenty that schooling and a minimum amount of healthcare are public goods, as are roads built on public land (the government owns most roads after all).

What is the justification for considering data centers capable of running LLMs to be a public good?

There are many counter examples of things many people use but are still private. Clothing stores, restaurants and grocery stores, farms, home appliance factories, cell phone factories, laundromats and more.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#46

Post by [deleted] »

esel2k wrote: post #42
adriand wrote: post #30

This article doesn’t add anything to what we know already. It’s still an open question what happens with the labs this coming year, but I personally think Anthropic’s focus on coding represents the clearest path to subscriber-based success (typical SaaS) whereas OpenAI has a clear opportunity with advertising. Both of these paths could be very lucrative. Meanwhile I expect Google will continue to struggle with making…

Where does google struggle to make products people don’t want to use? Is it a personal opinion?

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#47

Post by GannaIlinykh »

Burn rate often gets treated as a hard signal, but it is mostly about expectations. Once people get used to the idea of cheap intelligence, any slowdown feels like failure, even if the technology is still moving forward. That gap is usually where bubbles begin.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#48

Post by NewJazz »

Avicebron wrote: post #44

On the radio they mentioned that the total global chocolate market is ~100B, I googled it when I was home and it seems to be about ~135B. Apparently that is ... all chocolate, everywhere.. OpenAI's valuation is about 500B. Maybe going up to like 835B. I'd love to see the rationale that OpenAI (not "AI" everywhere) is more valuable than chocolate globally. ... so crash early 2026?

Wait, aren't you comparing revenue and market cap?

People take old things for granted often. Explains the Coolidge effect, and why plenty of people cheat.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#50

Post by andy99 »

andsoitis wrote: post #5

In a parallel universe, governments invest in the compute/datacenters (read: infra), and let model makers compete on the same playing field.

That could make sense in some steady state regime where there were stable requirements and mature tech (I wouldn’t vote for it but I can see an argument).

I see no argument why the government would jump into a hype cycle and start building infra that speculative startups are interested in. Why would they take on that risk compared to private investors, and how would they decide to back that over mammoth cloning infra or whatever other startups are doing?

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