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OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

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Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#441
post #396
post #139

AI is going to be a highly-competitive, extremely capital-intensive commodity market that ends up in a race to the bottom competing on cost and efficiency of delivering models that have all reached the same asymptotic performance in the sense of intelligence, reasoning, etc. The simple evidence for this is that everyone who has invested the same resources in AI has produced roughly the same result. OpenAI, Anthropic,…

Something nobody's talking about: OpenAI's losses might actually be attractive to certain investors from a tax perspective. Microsoft and other corporate investors can potentially use their share of OpenAI's operating losses to offset their own taxable income through partnership tax treatment. It's basically a tax-advantaged way to fund R&D - you get the loss deductions now while retaining upside optionality later. T…

Amazon already has not been paying any sort of income tax to the EU. There was a lawsuit in Belgium but Amazon has won that in late-2024 since they had a separate agreement in/with Luxembourg.

Speaking for EU, all big tech already not paying taxes one way or another, either using Dublin/Ireland (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, ...) and Luxembourg (Amazon & Microsoft as far as I can tell) to avoid such corporate/income taxes. Simply possible because all the earnings go back to the U.S. entity in terms of "IP rights".

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#442
post #139

AI is going to be a highly-competitive, extremely capital-intensive commodity market that ends up in a race to the bottom competing on cost and efficiency of delivering models that have all reached the same asymptotic performance in the sense of intelligence, reasoning, etc. The simple evidence for this is that everyone who has invested the same resources in AI has produced roughly the same result. OpenAI, Anthropic,…

> AI is a world-changing technology, just like the railroads were This comparison keeps popping up, and I think it's misleading. The pace of technology uptake is completely different from that of railroads: the user base of ChatGPT alone went from 0 to 200 million in nine months, and it's now- after just three years- around 900 million users on a weekly basis. Even if you think that railroads and AI are equally impac…

Railroads enabled people and goods to move from one place to another much easier and faster.

AI enables people to... produce even more useless slop than before?

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI is a world-changing technology, just like the railroads were This comparison keeps popping up, and I think it's misleading. The pace of technology uptake is completely different from that of railroads: the user base of ChatGPT alone went from 0 to 200 million in nine months, and it's now- after just three years- around 900 million users on a weekly basis. Even if you think that railroads and AI are equally impac…

Railroads enabled people and goods to move from one place to another much easier and faster. AI enables people to... produce even more useless slop than before?

At this point I'm taking the word "slop" as a sign meaning "I really didn't think this through and I'm just autocompleting based on a gut feeling and the first word that comes to mind".

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#444
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm here to hold the bag?

Your pension fund, yes.

This comment makes even less sense than jotras’ comment.

Pension funds buy shares in businesses such as Microsoft. The money going into the pension fund is not typically a function of the tax paid by companies such as Microsoft, but rather from a combination of actuaries’ recommendations, payroll tax receipts, and politicians’ priorities.

Therefore a pension funds’ equity holdings, such as Microsoft, doing well means taxes can be lower.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#446
post #377
post #139

AI is going to be a highly-competitive, extremely capital-intensive commodity market that ends up in a race to the bottom competing on cost and efficiency of delivering models that have all reached the same asymptotic performance in the sense of intelligence, reasoning, etc. The simple evidence for this is that everyone who has invested the same resources in AI has produced roughly the same result. OpenAI, Anthropic,…

The railroads provided something of enduring value. They did something materially better than previous competitors (horsecarts and canals) could. Even today, nothing beats freight rail for efficient, cheap modest-speed movement of goods. If we consider "AI" to be the current LLM and ImageGen bubble, I'm not sure we can say that. We were all wowed that we could write a brief prompt and get 5,000 lines of React code or…

I was really hoping, and with a different administration I think there was a real shot, for a huge influx of cash into clean energy infrastructure.

Imagine a trillion dollars (frankly it might be more, we'll see) shoved into clean energy generation and huge upgrades to our distribution.

With a bubble burst all we'd be left with is a modern grid and so much clean energy we could accelerate our move off fossil fuels.

Plus a lot of extra compute, that's less clear of a long term value.

Alas.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#447
post #377
post #139

AI is going to be a highly-competitive, extremely capital-intensive commodity market that ends up in a race to the bottom competing on cost and efficiency of delivering models that have all reached the same asymptotic performance in the sense of intelligence, reasoning, etc. The simple evidence for this is that everyone who has invested the same resources in AI has produced roughly the same result. OpenAI, Anthropic,…

The railroads provided something of enduring value. They did something materially better than previous competitors (horsecarts and canals) could. Even today, nothing beats freight rail for efficient, cheap modest-speed movement of goods. If we consider "AI" to be the current LLM and ImageGen bubble, I'm not sure we can say that. We were all wowed that we could write a brief prompt and get 5,000 lines of React code or…

You're absolutely correct! ( ;) )

The issue is that generation of error-prone content is indeed not very valuable. It can be useful in software engineering, but I'd put it way below the infamous 10x increase in productivity.

Summarizing stuff is probably useful, too, but its usefulness depends on you sitting between many different communication channels and being constantly swamped in input. (Is that why CEOs love it?)

Generally, LLMs are great translators with a (very) lossly compressed knowledge DB attached. I think they're great user Interfaces, and they can help streamline buerocracy (instead of getting rid of it) but they will not help getting down the cost of production of tangible items. They won't solve housing.

My best bet is in medicine. Here, all the areas that LLMs excell at meet. A slightly distopian future cuts the expensive personal doctors and replaces them with (few) nurses and many devices and medicine controlled by a medical agent.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're curious what your source is

Monthly Visits (chatGPT #5, Gemini #26): https://www.similarweb.com/blog/research/market-research/mos... Search Traffic: https://x.com/Similarweb/status/2003078223135990246

ChatGPT - 5.8b visits - -5.2% MoM

Gemini - 1.4b visits - +14.4% MoM

Yeah, ChatGPT is still more popular, but this does not show Gemini struggling exactly.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#449

The comparison to railroad bubble economics is apt. OpenAI's infrastructure costs are astronomical - training runs, inference compute, and scaling to meet demand all burn through capital at an incredible rate. What's interesting is the strategic positioning. They need to maintain leadership while somehow finding a sustainable business model. The API pricing already feels like it's in a race to the bottom as competiti…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#450

The comparison to railroad bubble economics is apt. OpenAI's infrastructure costs are astronomical - training runs, inference compute, and scaling to meet demand all burn through capital at an incredible rate. What's interesting is the strategic positioning. They need to maintain leadership while somehow finding a sustainable business model. The API pricing already feels like it's in a race to the bottom as competiti…

Railroad peaked at 6% of GDP in the US.

AI is at 1% of total US GDP right now.

We have 6x more to go.

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