Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#101

Post by niemandhier » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

spongebobstoes wrote: post #82

JSR_FDED wrote: post #50

Why would revenue continue to grow at this rate? Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware that the best models can be used for planning and then cheaper models for execution - all the way to local models for some tasks. Add in increasing competition from Chinese models… I’m not convinced this revenue growth is guaranteed.

because they have more research and better models coming building a Rube Goldberg machine on Chinese models might work okay, but it will be brittle, and is unlikely to work as well as the latest and greatest model from OpenAI the demand for intelligence is nearly limitless

Did you read the code dump Anthropic involuntary gifted us?

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#102

Post by simonw » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #41

simonw wrote: post #19

"OpenAI generated $13.07 billion in revenue in 2025" Considering just four years ago they were a research lab with hardly any revenue at all, and no corporate muscles for earning revenue, I think that is a very impressive number. (Sure, they're losing a whole lot of money too. Same goes for almost every other hyper-growth company in the history of tech.)

That argument supports any levels of losses, however I also think it’s rather misleading. Growth means some inefficiencies, but their expenses are largely around commodities like electricity and data centers not a sudden army of salespeople. They also got 150M 11 years ago and 1 billion 7 year ago, they where quite large in 2022. Basically you don’t get better at writing checks to your local utility which limits how…

> They also got 150M 11 years ago and 1 billion 7 year ago, they where quite large in 2022.

I had to look that up, you're talking about investment there, not earned revenue.

The 150M was their initial funding (actually 130M I think https://www.clay.com/dossier/openai-funding)

The 1B was from Microsoft in 2019: https://openai.com/index/microsoft-invests-in-and-partners-w...

In 2022 they only had 335 employees (according to various internet searches but I can't find an original source for that number.) I can't find credible numbers for revenue from the GPT-3 API, which did have some usage - GitHub Copilot started charging a subscription fee on June 21, 2022 - https://github.blog/changelog/2022-06-21-github-copilot-is-n... - and that was running on the OpenAI Codex model so presumably OpenAI had some revenue from that.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#103

Post by spongebobstoes » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:16 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #33

himata4113 wrote: post #13

so they could stop development and research right now and be profitable, considering that gpt 5.5 is often regarded as one of the best models for writing code this is looking pretty good. Let's take another example: If OpenAI grows to 10 times their current size and continue spending the same amount on research and development they would be profitable today without any other changes to their organizational structure.…

If they stop R&D right now they'd have to fire most of their staff to realize the savings and sell off their datacenter capacity. They would show a profit for 1 year and then become completely irrelevant.

they aren't suggesting it as an actual strategy, merely an indicator that the fundamentals seem realistic

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#104

Post by margalabargala » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:16 AM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #72

JSR_FDED wrote: post #50

Why would revenue continue to grow at this rate? Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware that the best models can be used for planning and then cheaper models for execution - all the way to local models for some tasks. Add in increasing competition from Chinese models… I’m not convinced this revenue growth is guaranteed.

global gdp is over 100 trillion. Something like 50-60% is paid to labor. If you assume AI takes a good chunk of labor, the market is gigantic. Really really really gigantic.

Most labor by any measurement is not knowledge work like software engineering.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#105

Post by backend_dev82 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:16 AM UTC

spongebobstoes wrote: post #97

backend_dev82 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard from Ed Zitron that you can't really turn off "training" on these models even after they have been released because they need continuous re-training to keep up with the changes in the world and the language etc. Is this correct? if it is, can we even say that research can be turned off entirely?

it's completely false

Thanks

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#106

Post by bxk76 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:16 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #19

"OpenAI generated $13.07 billion in revenue in 2025" Considering just four years ago they were a research lab with hardly any revenue at all, and no corporate muscles for earning revenue, I think that is a very impressive number. (Sure, they're losing a whole lot of money too. Same goes for almost every other hyper-growth company in the history of tech.)

Or a utility :)

Look at how a utlity works, in setting price specifically, for things that are considered a public good. The story is not about how much profit or revenue they make. Its about how do you keep it afloat and expanding in the coming year. Thats it.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#107

Post by moi2388 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

anshumankmr wrote: post #73

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy actually. If it grows a lot, with decent margins. Grow 30B at 40% pa for 10 years and you arrive at around $850B in revenue, assume 25% operating margins, that's slightly over 200B of operating income, and it all makes a lot of sense. You can debate the assumptions, but it isn't witchcraft. The math is simple.

I think what PEOPLE are saying IT is very difficult to sustain that level of growth.

Of course it is. But stocks aren’t a measure of current profitability. It’s a bet on future profits.

How many serious, large AI players are there? Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and who else exactly?

At least one of them will probably win. And winning here means billing almost all companies for AI and automation, consumers, perhaps robotics and research.. and that potential earning is massive.

So yes, I will pay 10 times the worth for the stock now, but paying 1000 per stock for a chance of owning all that future profit is not that outrageous.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#108

Post by ThrustVectoring » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

_spduchamp wrote: post #31

chillfox wrote: post #3

ArsTechnica has a nice graph showing it https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/leaked-financial-docs-sho... And I believe this is the actual source https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

From the Ars Technica article... OpenAI’s headline “net loss” number of just over $5 billion in 2024 ballooned to nearly $39 billion in 2025. But the 2025 number includes a significant accounting charge related to investor valuations that shifted amid the company’s 2025 conversion to a for-profit structure. The Financial Times cites “a person familiar with the matter” in reporting that this non-recurring charge was a…

Profit and loss tracks changes to the fair price of purchasing the business, not operational cash flow. The $30b didn't go anywhere since it's not cash flow, it's acknowledging that someone who purchases OpenAI today would be on the hook for $30b more of future ownership dilution than before 2025.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#109

Post by DoesntMatter22 » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

cmiles8 wrote: post #85

OpenAI likely missed the window to have a successful IPO. A year ago, even 6 months ago, folks would have been still hypnotized by the hype and they would have pulled it off. Today too many people see a burning ship of cash and no moat to justify the burn. The story just isn’t there anymore.

Musk best move IMO was going public before anyone else and gobbling up those 85 billion. I'm sure anthropic will do the same, leaving OpenAI maybe holding the bag. We'll see.

Re: Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

#110

Post by freakynit » Wed, Jun 17, 2026, 5:17 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #19

"OpenAI generated $13.07 billion in revenue in 2025" Considering just four years ago they were a research lab with hardly any revenue at all, and no corporate muscles for earning revenue, I think that is a very impressive number. (Sure, they're losing a whole lot of money too. Same goes for almost every other hyper-growth company in the history of tech.)

If your losses scale with your growth, while at the same time your competitors are eating into your future user-base, how are you ever gonna become profitable? Only two ways comes to my mind: regulatory capture, and moving upwards into full software-development house.