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Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn

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

#221
post #166
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine still saying this after open weight models being released everywhere and the likes of DeepSeek keeping their prices at the lowest possible for more than good enough intelligence that even Microsoft is migrating to deploy DeepSeek's models.

I use DeepSeek. I'm very familiar with open models. I run a popular benchmark to check their progress. DeepSeek is somewhere between Sonnet and Opus in capability, for much lower price. Their $0.87 per million output tokens is one of the few API offerings that is probably subsidized (the break-even price is probably around $2 judging by[1]) I think Anthropic and OpenAI's margins will erode some over time. But I think…

I find that Deepseek Pro to be below Sonnet 4.6 for much of the coding/review/executing tasks from plan. The only good thing it has going is the price. It will is cheaper for it to crunch through your well worked out implementation plans, it's slower, makes more errors, needs more tokens to fix those. And even at that increased spent it does deliver in the end. More tokens, lower cost, slower.

I use it as something that sits right below Sonnet for daily tasks that can be run in loops with validation checks, perfect. Anything more advanced...it just doesn't cut it.

Same experience with z-ai glm 5.1 btw... don't know what system prompt magic antrophic set in front of their Sonnet 4.6, but it does execute tasks efficiently.

claiming any of these deepseek models are close to opus is a bit optimistic

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you assume AI takes a good chunk of labor, the market is gigantic. Really really really gigantic. But without labor the entire economy also collapses into a singularity beyond which nothing really makes sense anymore, so there's that.

And it possibly does not take eliminating much of the labour over the span of less than a lifetime to fundamentally break economic signalling.

Much smaller rates of unemployment have worsened stagflation cycles due to various policy traps we are certainly not immune to repeating.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""For instance if there ends up being substantial labor disruption due to LLMs" "" .. who are they gonna sell to if people don't even have money to buy? We live in circular economy... everyone's dependent on someone or the other... you take one leg out of this, and the whole thing stops. UBI won't work either because it will lead to runaway inflation and extreme levels of invasive control over people's lives and wha…

I think a common mistake people making is viewing an economy as fixed, but everything is based on supply and demand. Tech is a tool, like a hammer. But right now it's a hammer that very few people can wield, and that alone is what drives its value. LLMs, if they reach their potential, stand to turn tech into just another hammer that anybody can use. And so being able to use that hammer will no longer be valuable, but…

[flagged]

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

#224
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.)

> 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 doesn't mean anything. There are examples to make both ways. E.g. WeWork

and WeWork is awesome example because it fell apart before IPO. It didn't even make it that far. On the other hand, for all of the shit talking that goes on online, SpaceX is up 49% from IPO price.

All of the shit that people said about SpaceX is still true. It's still up 49%. I'm sure it'll take a dump the next time anything bad happens, like a rocket explodes, but now that it's public, I'ma be watching all their rocket launches so I can buy if that happens and sell right after. I'm also going to be watching because going to space is fucking awesome but I can't buy a trip on that rocket yet and and no one's gonna pay me to watch it.

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

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's been extensively analyzed. Space is a massive industry with a huge base of people, disproportionately made up engineers and the like, who love digging through the nitty gritty of pretty much everything. Nasa space flight forums [1] are the analog of hacker news, but for space. That link is just for discussion on Starship, and currently has hundreds of thousands of posts. [1] - https://forum.nasaspaceflight.…

So what's the consensus? Any article in particular that you recommend?

Peruse the forum. There's a topic on near everything relevant you might imagine. If you want a topic starting from a bearish premise, here is one. [1] In general I think there's little doubt that Starship is viable, but the exact implications are open to a wide range of speculation. Prices are going to go down, and payload sizes are going to go up, but the exact degree is open to speculation varying by orders of magnitude.

[1] - https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63166.0

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R&D cost is static, converting all subscription customers to api customers would yield 10x boost in revenue immediately so the demand is there, of course we will probably see demand expand more than that the question is if it's 10x (break even) or 20x (justifying trillion dollar evaluation.

> R&D cost is static since when? do you think their R&D in 2026 is the same as in 2022?

22->26 was scaling up, right now they're at their peak R&D spending from today onwards for the next forseeable future until nvidia starts rolling out their new room-sized systems this will be the upper limit of what can be trained without diminishing returns to where you're just burning money for less than single digit gains. R&D grows because you have more money to spend, not because the R&D costs are increasing, therefore assuming current R&D costs are enough to keep up with competition (which they very likely are) R&D will remain static or (ideally) shrink.

95% or more of current R&D costs are compute, same as cost of revenue.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX IPO shows that the mania is alive and well. The big AI IPOs this year will mark the high point in the bubble IMO, with retail FOMO ensuring that they pop like SpaceX has. After that I expect them to crater, just like all those Spacs and Blockchain startups.

What do you mean spacex has? Did spacex stock go down?

Pop as in go up to an even more insane valuation initially.

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

#228
post #221
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use DeepSeek. I'm very familiar with open models. I run a popular benchmark to check their progress. DeepSeek is somewhere between Sonnet and Opus in capability, for much lower price. Their $0.87 per million output tokens is one of the few API offerings that is probably subsidized (the break-even price is probably around $2 judging by[1]) I think Anthropic and OpenAI's margins will erode some over time. But I think…

I find that Deepseek Pro to be below Sonnet 4.6 for much of the coding/review/executing tasks from plan. The only good thing it has going is the price. It will is cheaper for it to crunch through your well worked out implementation plans, it's slower, makes more errors, needs more tokens to fix those. And even at that increased spent it does deliver in the end. More tokens, lower cost, slower. I use it as something t…

I use Claude at work, DeepSeek at home.

For software development, I notice no difference. For all the work I did using AI, DeepSeek is as capable as claude.

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

#229
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Deepseek Pro to be below Sonnet 4.6 for much of the coding/review/executing tasks from plan. The only good thing it has going is the price. It will is cheaper for it to crunch through your well worked out implementation plans, it's slower, makes more errors, needs more tokens to fix those. And even at that increased spent it does deliver in the end. More tokens, lower cost, slower. I use it as something t…

I use Claude at work, DeepSeek at home. For software development, I notice no difference. For all the work I did using AI, DeepSeek is as capable as claude.

Have you tried other tools like windsurf? Or other free open source Ai?
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