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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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer brand quality is so massively underrated by tech people. ChatGPT has a phenomenal brand. That's worth 100x more than "product stickiness". They have 700 million weekly users and growing much faster than Google. I think your points on Google being well positioned are apt for capitalization reasons, but only one company has consumer mindshare on "AI" and its the one with "ai" in its name.

> ChatGPT has a phenomenal brand. My observation is different: ChatGPT may be well-known, but does not have a really good reputation anymore (I'd claim that it is in average of equal dubious reputation as Google) in particular in consideration of - a lot of public statements and actions of Sam Altman (in particular his involvement into Worldcoin (iris scanning) makes him untolerable for being the CEO of a company tha…

Eh. Altman is not Musk in terms of negative coverage or average sentiment on the net. That might change in the future, but my personal guess is that your perception may be based on spending too much time in a specific echo chamber. I personally like to use people who don't use llms at all for a proper grounding. In those cases, Altman name does not exist, while Musk barely registers.

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

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen a tonnes of Chat GPT ads on Reddit. Usually with image generation of a dog in Japanese cartoon style.

This seems to be a common ad template for reddit ads, it's not just oai I've seen loads of ads use the this is fine template.

For clarity it wasnt a meme template (not "this is fine" dog or any other). It was a picture of a real dog and next to it an AI generated version of the same dog.

I just loaded up reddit and ad was there. Bunny this time:

https://imgur.com/a/VfnOJNH

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

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer brand quality is so massively underrated by tech people. ChatGPT has a phenomenal brand. That's worth 100x more than "product stickiness". They have 700 million weekly users and growing much faster than Google. I think your points on Google being well positioned are apt for capitalization reasons, but only one company has consumer mindshare on "AI" and its the one with "ai" in its name.

Google has to be shitting its pants. No one knows what is "gemini", probably some stupid nerd thing. Normies knows ChatGPT and that is what matters.

They might be. Google has been getting mildly 'aggressive' in their emails pleading with me to use gemini and I have yet to try it ( and that is despite being mildly interested ). There is a reason first mover's advantage is a real thing. People stick with what they think they know.

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real answer is in advertising/referral revenue. My life insurance broker got £1k in commission, I think my mortgage broker got roughly the same. I’d gladly let OpenAI take the commission if ChatGPT could get me better deals.

Insurance agents—unlike many tech-focused sales jobs—are licensed and regulated, requiring specific training, background checks, and ongoing compliance to sell products that directly affect customers’ financial stability and wellbeing. Mortgage brokers also adhere to licensing and compliance regulations, and their market expertise, negotiation ability, and compliance duties are not easily replaced by AI tools or plat…

Yeah, I don’t want my mortgage recommendations to come from a prompt injection

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

#605
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…

ChatGPT (and all the competitors) are trivially sticky products: I have a lot of ongoing conversations in there, that I pick up all the time. Add more long term memory stuff — a direction I am sure they will keep pushing — and all of the sudden there is a lot of personal data that you rely on it having, that make the product better and that most people will never care to replicate/transfer. Just being the product tha…

This. I am not sure why or how this is missed, but because you cannot easily port context ( maybe yet ), the stickiness increases with every conversation assuming your questions are not encyclopedia type questions that don't need follow up.

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

#606

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 .

I can only speak as a US CPA, but revenue and income are used interchangeably. You're thinking of net income or profit. It's certainly preferable to use the term revenue instead of income in my opinion however to avoid misunderstandings like this.

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

#607
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is OpenAI's competitive moat? There's no product stickiness here. Would have agreed with you untill I saw the meltdown of people losing their "friend" when chatgpt 5 was released. Somehow openai has fallen into a "sticky" userbase.

Will people accept ads from their “computer friend”? Might feel like the Truman Show when your friend starts giving you promo codes in casual conversation

Wait, your friends don't casually always give you promo codes?

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

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is much closer to the dotcom boom than the subprime stuff. The dotcom boom/bust affected tech more than anything else. It didn’t involve consumers like the housing crash did.

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What you're missing is how that value comes about. People seem to think it's an infinite fountain but it's more like strip mining the commons.

We also know that AI hype is holding up most of the stock market this point, including the ticker symbols which you don't think of as being for "AI companies". Market optimism at large is coming from the idea that companies won't need employees soon, or that they can keep using AI to de-leverage and de-skill their workforce

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

#609
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

On the other hand, no one cares about Velcro or Tupperware

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

#610
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…

The name ChatGpt is probably the most valuable brand at the moment. Everybody is talking and using it.
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