OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, with Spending Hitting $34B

Post by anuramat » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

joshuastuden wrote: post #271

romaniv wrote: post #248

The fact that people here are looking at these numbers and saying "this is fine" is absolutely bonkers. Basically, it's a company that's not sustainable for two separate reasons. The first one is that they have an extremely high overhead. SG&A of 55% is really bad. The seconds reason is that their R&D costs are truly astronomical. They could probably cut those costs to some extent, but they're not going to cut them t…

They're not really losing ground to Anthropic. 5.5 was a bit better than 4.8. Fable was good, and was a jump over 4.8, but only incremental over 5.5. Anthropic is also likely losing money, right?

Post by ragequittah » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

paytonjjones wrote: post #272

bruce343434 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone else will be 5% more productive. Then no one is "more" productive. So everyone has a higher output, but the same wages and hours worked. There was only a gap when usable AI first came out, some contractors could do the same quantity of work in less time and enjoy time off or do more jobs. Now the gap has closed or is closing. And using AI now is more about not being less productive than peers who do use it.

That's not how productivity works. It's not a zero-sum game. If all construction workers can build houses 5% more efficiently, that's not the same as nothing changing. Depending on supply and demand, it means 5% more houses are built, or houses are 5% cheaper, or maybe 5% bigger, or some combination. Whether or not the construction workers all get a raise or 5% get fired (or both) depends on that supply and demand, b…

Post by paytonjjones » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:17 AM UTC

bruce343434 wrote: post #302

paytonjjones wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how productivity works. It's not a zero-sum game. If all construction workers can build houses 5% more efficiently, that's not the same as nothing changing. Depending on supply and demand, it means 5% more houses are built, or houses are 5% cheaper, or maybe 5% bigger, or some combination. Whether or not the construction workers all get a raise or 5% get fired (or both) depends on that supply and demand, b…

Why would the company pay more when they can just not pay more? The only things I can see happening is they might lower prices as competition ramps up, or in general as there is more supply for the same cost.

Post by haaz » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

bruce343434 wrote: post #302

paytonjjones wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how productivity works. It's not a zero-sum game. If all construction workers can build houses 5% more efficiently, that's not the same as nothing changing. Depending on supply and demand, it means 5% more houses are built, or houses are 5% cheaper, or maybe 5% bigger, or some combination. Whether or not the construction workers all get a raise or 5% get fired (or both) depends on that supply and demand, b…

Why would the company pay more when they can just not pay more? The only things I can see happening is they might lower prices as competition ramps up, or in general as there is more supply for the same cost.

Post by Gigachad » Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #256

romaniv wrote: post #248

The fact that people here are looking at these numbers and saying "this is fine" is absolutely bonkers. Basically, it's a company that's not sustainable for two separate reasons. The first one is that they have an extremely high overhead. SG&A of 55% is really bad. The seconds reason is that their R&D costs are truly astronomical. They could probably cut those costs to some extent, but they're not going to cut them t…

These companies are clearly calling things that are R&D that aren't R&D. If you're building a model that lasts a few months before it's no longer the most current one, and maybe a year before it's completely unusable by anybody, then that should just be COGS. Doing that, however, would betray the real problem with this business model.