but why is that a feasible hypothetical? Just 10x your revenue without increasing R&D cost? where's this 1 magic trick and why can't every company just use it?
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?
It's wild to think how efficient Internet services were prior to AI. The most expensive thing would probably have been something like encoding video. Now you've a substantial portion of a rack dedicated to a user in the case of something like fable
Best analogue we have is probably video streaming. Or maybe more so live streaming. Unless subscription based and limited time events it seems those don't do well. Twitch has lost money for how long? And most smaller players seem propped up in other ways. So if there is real cost involved things start to look lot worse and might not be overcome. OpenAI is unlikely to be exception for me.
But video streaming can be very profitable! Youtube and Netflix are great examples.
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/
Just let go of the entire R&D team and then you have a 50% margin business. UPDATE: Also bad news, you need to let go of all of sales and marketing and G&A. And THEN it's a 50% margin business.
Can't do that.
If they get rid of R&D, then someone else will make a better model and we will all switch to using that model.
If sales & marketing covers subsidies and bribes then they cant get rid of that either. Get rid of the bribes and they will be shut down. Get rid of the subsidies and we will all switch to someone cheaper.
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.
After reading Financial Times and Ed Zitron's articles[0][1], I've reached the opposite conclusion. OpenAI's situation healthier than what the outsiders once believed: > Revenue: $13.07 billion > Cost of Revenue: $7.5 billion In other words generating tokens is actually a profitable business even for the frontier models. It's best to IPO when it's the case. [0]: https://www.ft.com/content/e15b0d7e-ff6b-4f16-ba7a-4068…
The problem with that calculation though is that you’re ignoring the deprecation cost of developing the models which is where much/most of the cost actually lies.
Your math is saying an apartment building is profitable because rent exceeds utilities and other direct expense but ignores the mortgage. Real estate run with that math goes bankrupt quite quickly and this is essentially the same problem Open AI has.
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.
After reading Financial Times and Ed Zitron's articles[0][1], I've reached the opposite conclusion. OpenAI's situation healthier than what the outsiders once believed: > Revenue: $13.07 billion > Cost of Revenue: $7.5 billion In other words generating tokens is actually a profitable business even for the frontier models. It's best to IPO when it's the case. [0]: https://www.ft.com/content/e15b0d7e-ff6b-4f16-ba7a-4068…
To be fair, a lot of that revenue is from subscriptions that aren't necessarily fully utilized. OpenAI said in March [0] that they have 50 million subscribers. Assuming they're all on the $8/month plan, that's $4.8 billion a year, likely at a pretty low COR.
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/
This also shows that 2025 paid for 2024. Unless they increased their spending even more, "all they have to do" is cover 2025 with the 2026 revenue?
Do you think they can cover 2026 with 2027 without raising more money?
Or is this more like a bonfire that requires more fuel to keep burning?
Sure, but being able to pay for inference and nothing but inference out of revenue leads to what end?
they have 6B left over after paying for inference, that's a lot of money R&D is a leading expense, a good portion of that is probably R&D for 2026 models
Could they have treated subsidies to inference as a sales and marketing expense, though?