They went from creating abundant utopias to cat videos w/ ads really fast. Never let anyone tell you capitalist incentives don't work.
OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
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Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#12> US$2.5 billion on stock-based compensation um...
Never having worked for a company in a position like OpenAI, how does this manifest in the real world as actual comp? Like I get 50,000 shares deposited in to my Fidelity account, worth $2 each, but i can't sell them or do anything with them?
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Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#13$2.5B in stock comp for about 3,000 employees. that’s roughly $830k per person in just six months. Almost 60% of their revenue went straight back to staff.
Sounds like they could improve that bottom line by firing all their staff and replacing them with AI. Maybe they can get a bulk discount on Claude?
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#14One negative signal, no matter how small, will send the market into a death spiral. That will happen in a matter of hours.
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#15> US$2.5 billion on stock-based compensation um...
Never having worked for a company in a position like OpenAI, how does this manifest in the real world as actual comp? Like I get 50,000 shares deposited in to my Fidelity account, worth $2 each, but i can't sell them or do anything with them?
You got the right idea there. They wouldn't actually show up in your Fidelity account but there would be a different website where you can log in and see your shares. You wouldn't be able to sell them or transfer them anywhere unless the company arranges a sale and invites you to participate in it.
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#16" We lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume! "
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Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#17These numbers are pretty ugly. You always expect new tech to operate at a loss initially but the structure of their losses is not something one easily scales out of. In fact it gets more painful as they scale. Unless something fundamentally changes and fast this is gonna get ugly real quick.
The real answer is in advertising/referral revenue.
My life insurance broker got £1k in commission, I think my mortgage broker got roughly the same. I’d gladly let OpenAI take the commission if ChatGPT could get me better deals.
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#18> US$2.5 billion on stock-based compensation um...
Never having worked for a company in a position like OpenAI, how does this manifest in the real world as actual comp? Like I get 50,000 shares deposited in to my Fidelity account, worth $2 each, but i can't sell them or do anything with them?
I can't speak to OpenAI's specific setup, but a lot of startups will use a third party service like Carta to manage their cap table. So there's a website, you have an account, you can log in and it tells you that you have a grant of X shares that vests over Y months. You have to sign a form to accept the grant. There might be some option to do an 83b election if you have stock options rather than RSUs. But that's about it.
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#19Seems like despite all the doom about how they were about to be "disrupted", Google might have the last laugh here: they're still quite profitable despite all the Gemini spending, and could go way lower with pricing until OAI and Anthropic have to tap out.
Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
#20$2.5B in stock comp for about 3,000 employees. that’s roughly $830k per person in just six months. Almost 60% of their revenue went straight back to staff.
They have to compete with Zuckerberg throwing $100M comps to poach people. I think $830k per person is nothing in comparison.