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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

#81

Post by ok123456 »

IshKebab wrote: post #67
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…

I don't. Google has at least a few advantages: 1. Google books, which they legally scanned. No dubious training sets for them. They also regularly scrape the entire internet. And they have YouTube. Easy access to the best training data, all legally. 2. Direct access to the biggest search index. When you ask ChatGPT to search for something it is basically just doing what we do but a bit faster. Google can be much smar…

Google's most significant advantage in this space is its organizational experience in providing services at this scale, as well as its mature infrastructure to support them. When the bubble pops, it's not lights-out or permanently degraded performance.

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

#82

Post by quantified »

nialv7 wrote: post #60
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.

if datacenters are built by the government, then i think it's fair to assume there will be some level of democratic control of what those datacenters will be used for.

What's the democratic control of existing resources? I would make the opposite assumption, it would be captured by the wealthiest interests.

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

#83

Post by nine_k »

nialv7 wrote: post #60
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.

if datacenters are built by the government, then i think it's fair to assume there will be some level of democratic control of what those datacenters will be used for.

Certainly! Your congress representatives would be voting on how to allocate its computing power. (Do you remember who did you vote for last time?)

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

#84

Post by johnnyfived »

password54321 wrote: post #49

Not sure why they put so much investment into videoSlop and imageSlop. Anthropic seems to be more focused at least.

But how much more profitable are they? We see revenue but not profits / spending. Anthropic seems to be growing faster than OpenAI did but that could be the benefit of post-GPT hype.

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

#85

Post by Alconicon »

password54321 wrote: post #49

Not sure why they put so much investment into videoSlop and imageSlop. Anthropic seems to be more focused at least.

Because OpenAI stands for AI leader.

If Gemini can create or edit an image, chatgpt needs to be able to do this too. Who wants to copy&paste prompts between ai agents?

Also if you want to have more semantics, you add image, video and audio to your model. It gets smarter because of it.

OpenAI is also relevant bigger than antropic and is known as a generic 'helper'. Antropic probably saw the benefits of being more focused on developer which allows it to succeed longer in the game for the amount of money they have.

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

#86

Post by kyyt »

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?

I love AI, and ChatGPT has been transformative for me. But would I give it up for chocolate? I honestly don't think I could.

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

#87

Post by Alconicon »

gip wrote: post #31

There is no doubt that OpenAI is taking a lot of risks by betting that AI adoption will translate into revenues in the very short term. And that could really happen imo (with a low probability sure, but worth the risk for VCs? Probably).

Apparently we all have enough money to put it into OpenAI.

Some players have to play, like google, some players want to play like USA vs. China.

Besides that, chatting with an LLM is very very convincing. Normal non technical people can see what 'this thing' can already do and as long as the progress is continuing as fast as it currently is, its still a very easy to sell future.

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

#89

Post by serf »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #22
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.

You are already paying for several national lab HPC centers. These are used for government/university research - no idea if commercial interests can rent time on them. The big ones are running weather, astronomy simulations, nuclear explosions, biological sequencing, and so on.

>The big ones are running weather, astronomy simulations, nuclear explosions, biological sequencing, and so on.

these things constitute public goods that benefit the individual regardless of participation.

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

#90

Post by cameronh90 »

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?

Ignoring that those numbers aren't directly comparable, it did make me wonder, if I had to give up either "AI" or chocolate tomorrow, which would I pick?

Even as an enormous chocolate lover (in all three senses) who eats chocolate several times a week, I'd probably choose AI instead.

OpenAI has alternatives, but also I do spend more money on OpenAI than I do on chocolate currently.

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