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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

#281

Post by exasperaited »

Rohansi wrote: post #259
nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

It'll be interesting to see the effect ads have on their trustworthiness. There's potential for it to end up worse than Google because sponsored content can blend in better and possibly not be reliably disclosed.

There is also the IMO not exactly settled question of whether an advertiser is comfortable handing over its marketing to an AI.

Can any AI be sensibly and reliably instructed not to do product placement in inappropriate contexts?

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#282

Post by bombcar »

skanaley wrote: post #280
nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

"Please help me with my factorial homework." buyACoke 0 = 1 buyACoke rightNow = youShould * buyACoke (rightNow `at` walmart) where youShould = rightNow at = (-) walmart = 1

Drink verification can

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#283

Post by alok-g »

nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

>> ... underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future.

I would like AI to focus on helping consumers discover the right products for their stated needs as opposed to just being shown (personalized) ads. As of now, I frequently have a hard time finding the things I need via Amazon search, Google, as well as ChatGPT.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#284

Post by chmod775 »

iambateman wrote: post #239
nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

I think this is directionally right but to nitpick…Google has way more trust than OpenAI right now and it’s not close. Acceleration is felt, not velocity.

This really depends on where you are are. Some countries' populations, especially those known to value privacy, are extremely distrustful of anything associated with Facebook or Google.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#285

Post by counterargument »

fooker wrote: post #154
Analemma_ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly: when was the last time you used ChatGPT-3.5? Its value deprecated to zero after, what, two-and-a-half years? (And the Nvidia chips used to train it have barely retained any value either) The financials here are so ugly: you have to light truckloads of money on fire forever just to jog in place.

> And the Nvidia chips used to train it have barely retained any value either Oh, I'd love to get a cheap H100! Where can I find one? You'll find it costs almost as much used as it's new.

[dead]

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#286

Post by croes »

otterley wrote: post #168

That headline can't be correct. Income is revenues minus expenses (and a few other things). You can't have both an income and a loss at the same time. It's $4.3B in revenue .

Every indebted person can tell you that you can have an income and loss at the same time. Income is revenue.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#287

Post by patrickhogan1 »

simonw wrote: post #58

I think the most interesting numbers in this piece (ignoring the stock compensation part) are: $4.3 billion in revenue - presumably from ChatGPT customers and API fees $6.7 billion spent on R&D $2 billion on sales and marketing - anyone got any idea what this is? I don't remember seeing many ads for ChatGPT but clearly I've not been paying attention in the right places. Open question for me: where does the cost of ru…

Sales people out in the field selling to enterprises + free credits to get people hooked.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#288

Post by imachine1980_ »

syntaxing wrote: post #277
nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

They should be concerned with open weight models that don’t run on consumer hardware. The larger models from Qwen (Qwen Max) and ZLM (GLM and GLM air) perform not too far from Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-5. ZLM offers a $3 plan that is decently generous. I can pretty much replace it over Sonnet 4 in Claude Code (I swear, Anthropic has been nerfing Sonnet 4 for people on the Pro plan). You can run Qwen3-coder for free upt…

I believe regular people will not change from chatGPT if it has some ads. I know people who use "alternative" wrappers that have ads because they aren't tech savvy, and I agree with the OP that this could be a significant amount of money We aren't 700 million people that use it.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#289

Post by ares623 »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #262
ares623 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if they stop doing what got them there they’ll be profitable? If I stop buying grocery and paying electricity bills I can finish up my mortgage in no time.

I can see why you'd make that analogy, but that wasn't quite what I was trying to say. I just meant that not all expenses are created equal. Plenty of companies have high burn rates due to high R&D costs. It can make them look unprofitable on paper, but it's a tactic used to scale quicker, get economies of scale, higher leverage in negotiating, etc. It's not a requirement that they invest in R&D indefinitely. In cont…

Apologies for the snark.

I don't think they can stop the 3 things you mentioned though.

- Stopping R&D means their top engineers and scientists will go elsewhere

- Stopping marketing means they will slowly lose market share. I don't care for marketing personally but I can appreciate its importance in a corporation

- Stopping/reducing compensation will also make them lose people

The costs are an inherent part of the company. It can't exist without it. Sure, they can adjust some levers a little bit here and there, but not too much or it all comes crumbling down.

Re: OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss

#290

Post by muzani »

twelvechairs wrote: post #246
nojs wrote: post #231

I think people are massively underestimating the money they will come from ads in the future. They generated $4.3B in revenue without any advertising program to monetise their 700 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free product. Google earns essentially all of its revenue from ads, $264B in 2024. ChatGPT has more consumer trust than Google at this point, and numerous ways of inserting sponsored results…

> But as long as OpenAI remains the go-to for the average consumer, they be fine. This is like the argument of a couple of years ago "as long as Tesla remains ahead of the Chinese technology...". OpenAI can definitely become a profitable company but I dont see anything to say they will have a moat and monopoly.

They're the only ones making AI with a personality. Yeah, you don't need chocolate flavored protein shakes but if I'm taking it every day, I get sick of the vanilla flavor.
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