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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

#511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely don’t argue against that, once people get into a habit of using something, it takes quite a bit to get away from it. Just that an American startup can literally run ZLM models themselves (open weight with permissive license) as a competitor to ChatGPT is pretty wild to think about

MySpace collapsed in something like 18 months.

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

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got “normie” friends who I’d bet don’t even know that what Google has at the top of their search results is “AI” results and instead assume it’s just some extension of the normal search results we’ve all gotten used to (knowledge graph) Every one of them refers to using “ChatGPT” when talking about AI. How likely is it to stay that way? No idea, but OpenAI has clearly captured a notable amount of mindshare in th…

In the UK, everyone refers to a vacuum as a 'hoover'. They are not the dominant vacuum brand there despite the massive name recognition.

BAND-AID is another one

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

#513
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 affiliation is much more likely to be a relevant revenue stream for them in the future. Instant checkouts would be a game changer in my view. Especially for upcoming generations, that don't have the habit of scrolling the open web to get their stuff done, but are native to LLMs.

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

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some OpenAI ads on Italian tv and they made no sense to me, they tried hard to be apple like, but realistically nobody knew what they were about.

Italian advertising is weird in general. Month ago leaving Venice we pulled over on a gas station and I started just going thru pages on some magazine. At some point I see advertising on what looks like old fashioned shoes - and owner of the company holding his son with sign "from generation to generation". Only thing - the ~3 year old boy is completely naked wearing only shoes with his little pee pee sticking out. I…

If that made you uncomfortable, you better avoid the beaches in Italy and the rest of Europe.

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

#515
post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, this seems like a cop out. It’s so easy for people to shout bubble on the internet without actually putting their own money on the line. Talk is cheap - it doesn’t matter how many times you say it, I think you don’t have conviction if you’re not willing to put your own skin in the game. (Which is fine, you don’t have to put your money on the line. But it just annoys me when everyone cries “bubble” from the sideli…

Believe it or not, many people just don’t care about the stock market. But they may still care about the economy that could crash badly if the AI bubble gets too big before it pops.

People find all kinds of things to worry about if it gives them something to do, I guess.

In the same way that my elderly grandmother binge watches CNN to have something to worry about.

But the commenter I responded to DID care about the stock market, despite your attempt to grandstand.

And my point was, and still is, if you really believe it’s a bubble and you don’t actually have a short position, then you don’t actually believe it’s a bubble deep down.

Talk is cheap - let’s see your positions.

It would be like saying “I’ve got this great idea for a company, I’m sure it would do really well, but I don’t believe it enough to actually start a company.”

Ok, then what does that actually say about your belief in your idea?

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

#516
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…

> ads in the future. It boggles my mind that people still think advertising can be a major part of the economy. If AI is propping up the economy right now [0] how is it possible that the rest of the economy can possibly fund AI through profit sharing? That's fundamentally what advertising is: I give you a share of my revenue (hopefully from profits) in order to help increase my market share. The limit of what adverti…

I think your argument isn't exactly right.

You can imagine a future world where producing real goods and services is ~free (AI compute infinite etc.)

In this world, the entire economy will be ~advertising only so you can charge people anything at all instead of giving it away for free.

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

#517
post #362
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…

What is OpenAI's competitive moat? There's no product stickiness here. What prevents people from just using Google, who can build AI stuff into their existing massive search/ads/video/email/browser infrastructure? Normal, non-technical users can't tell the difference between these models at all, so their usage numbers are highly dependent on marketing. Google has massive distribution with world-wide brands that peopl…

Currently their moat is history. Why I keep coming back to ChatGPT is it ‘remembers’ our previous chats, so I don’t have to explain things over and over again. And this history builds up over time.

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

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.. if I was able to know the time it takes for bubbles to pop I would've shorted many of the players long ago.

Eh, this seems like a cop out. It’s so easy for people to shout bubble on the internet without actually putting their own money on the line. Talk is cheap - it doesn’t matter how many times you say it, I think you don’t have conviction if you’re not willing to put your own skin in the game. (Which is fine, you don’t have to put your money on the line. But it just annoys me when everyone cries “bubble” from the sideli…

You can correctly identify a bubble without being able to identify when it'll burst (which is arguably the much harder problem).

The statistically correct play is therefore not to do this (and just keep buying).

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

#519
post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this. I’ve switched to Claude for a while (because I can’t afford max plans for both) and nobody in the real world has any idea what it is I’m talking about. “Oh it’s like ChatGPT?”

Claude is also difficult to consistently pronounce for a non-English speaker. Sometimes people dont say that because it can get misinterpreted. ChatGPT is something easy on the the tongue and very difficult to mis-pronounce.

The CEO is also more puritan than the pope himself considering the amount of censorship it has. Not sure if they are even interested in marketing to normies though.

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

#520
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is OpenAI's competitive moat? There's no product stickiness here. What prevents people from just using Google, who can build AI stuff into their existing massive search/ads/video/email/browser infrastructure? Normal, non-technical users can't tell the difference between these models at all, so their usage numbers are highly dependent on marketing. Google has massive distribution with world-wide brands that peopl…

It's a distinctive brand, pleasant user experience, and a trustworthy product, like every other commodified technology on the planet. That's all that matters now. We've passed the "good enough" bar for llms for the majority of consumer use cases. From here out it's like selling cellphones and laptops

Yeah most people genuinely cannot tell the difference in quality between those top models. People here jerk off to some benchmarks but in real life that crap is completely meaningless
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