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

economist.com

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

#711

Post by latchup »

juped wrote: post #705
latchup wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone seriously believes AI will disappear without a trace. At the very least, LLMs will remain as the state of the art in high-level language processing (editing, translation, chat interfaces, etc.) The real problem is the massive over-promises of transforming every industry, replacing most human labor, and eventually reaching super-intelligence based on current models. I hope we can agree that these…

Bubbles bursting aren't bad unless you were overinvested in the bubble. Consider that you'll be wiping your ass with DIMMs once this one bursts; I can always put more memory to good use.

> Bubbles bursting aren't bad unless you were overinvested in the bubble.

That's what I am trying to say: every big technology player, every industry, every government is all in on AI. That means you and I are along for the ride, whether we like it or not.

> Consider that you'll be wiping your ass with DIMMs once this one bursts; I can always put more memory to good use.

Except you can't, because DRAM makers have almost entirely pivoted from making (G)DDR chips to making HBM instead. HBM must be co-integrated at the interposer level and 3D-stacked, resulting in terrible yield. This makes it extremely pricy and impossible to package separately (no DIMMs).

So when I say the world is all in on this, I mean it. With every passing minute, there is less and less we can salvage once this is over; for consumer DRAM, it's already too late.

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

#712

Post by sph »

only-one1701 wrote: post #161
piskov wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as with the internet 99% of the usage won’t be for education, work, personal development, what have you. It will be for effing kitten videos and memes.

That’s an unusual way of saying uh…adult entertainment

It's pussies one way or another

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

#713

Post by sdwr »

Fraterkes wrote: post #578
sigmoid10 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you have armies of accountants rating stuff like this all day long. I'm sure they could show you a highly detailed risk analysis. You also don't count on any specific deal working, you count on the overall statistics being in your favour. That's literally how venture capital works.

(I think) I get how venture capital works, my point is that the bullish story for openAI has them literally restructuring the global economy. It seems strange to me that people are making bets with relatively slim profit margins (an average of 500m on a 10b investment in your example) on such volatile and unpredictable events.

AI has a lot lower bar to clear to upend the tech industry compared to the global economy. Not being in on AI is an existential risk for these companies.

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

#714

Post by juped »

gordonhart wrote: post #568
cmiles8 wrote: post #276

AI is turning into the worst possible business setup for AI startups. A commodity that requires huge capital investment and ongoing innovation to stay relevant. There’s no room for someone to run a small but profitable gold mine or couple of oil wells on the side. The only path to survival is investing crazy sums just to stay relevant and keep up. Meanwhile customers have virtually zero brand loyalty so if you slip b…

For consumers, the chat history is the moat. Why switch to a different provider for a marginal model improvement when ChatGPT already “knows” you? The value of sticking to a single provider is already there, even with the limited memory features they’ve implemented thus far.

Just wait until you ask chatgpt where the export chat history button is!

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

#715

Post by dbbk »

onion2k wrote: post #393
jfrbfbreudh wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s moat: Try “@gmail” in Gemini Google’s surface area to apply AI is larger than any other company’s. And they have arguably the best multimodal model and indisputably the best flash model?

Try “@gmail” in Gemini I think this is a problem for Google. Most users aren't going to do that unless they're told it's possible. 99% of users are working to a mental model of AI that they learned when they first encountered ChatGPT - the idea that AI is a separate app, that they can talk to and prompt to get outputs, and that's it. They're probably starting to learn that they can select models, and use different mo…

Gemini can't even create a Google Doc if you prompt it to.

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

#716

Post by dbbk »

atombender wrote: post #538
Chyzwar wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is building moat around theirs models with claude code, Agent SDK, containers, programmatic tool use, tool search, skills and more. Once you fully integrate you will not switch. Also being capital intensive is a form of moat. I think we will end up with market similar to cloud computing. Few big players with great margins creating cartel.

I thought that, too, but lately I've been using OpenCode with Claude Opus, rather than Claude Code, and have been loving it. OpenCode has LSPs out of the box (coming to Claude Code, but not there yet), has a more extensive UI (e.g. sidebar showing pending todos), allows me to switch models mid-chat, has a desktop app (Electron-type wrapper, sure, but nevertheless, desktop; and it syncs with the TUI/web versions so yo…

Does OpenCode work with their subscription Max plan or is it API pricing only?

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

#717

Post by atombender »

dbbk wrote: post #716
atombender wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that, too, but lately I've been using OpenCode with Claude Opus, rather than Claude Code, and have been loving it. OpenCode has LSPs out of the box (coming to Claude Code, but not there yet), has a more extensive UI (e.g. sidebar showing pending todos), allows me to switch models mid-chat, has a desktop app (Electron-type wrapper, sure, but nevertheless, desktop; and it syncs with the TUI/web versions so yo…

Does OpenCode work with their subscription Max plan or is it API pricing only?

Pretty sure it does. It just uses whatever you log in as.

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

#718

Post by monocasa »

satvikpendem wrote: post #680
monocasa wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's $60m/yr is the only thing keeping them profitable. Mozilla's business model isn't really something to emulate, even if the stock market doesn't really see it that way.

Not really. Lots of companies have valuable data they sell and have been in business for decades just fine. It's even better for reddit because it's user generated so they don't even have to do anything. The users who left during the API debacle are not the vast majority of users which are generally casual and do not give a single shit about what happened, much as tech people like to think otherwise.

The causal users (to say nothing of the the massive uptick in bot traffic) are some of the more useless data from an AI training perspective.

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

#719

Post by satvikpendem »

monocasa wrote: post #718
satvikpendem wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Lots of companies have valuable data they sell and have been in business for decades just fine. It's even better for reddit because it's user generated so they don't even have to do anything. The users who left during the API debacle are not the vast majority of users which are generally casual and do not give a single shit about what happened, much as tech people like to think otherwise.

The causal users (to say nothing of the the massive uptick in bot traffic) are some of the more useless data from an AI training perspective.

Again, this is a techie take. Lots of people for example use ChatGPT for personal therapy and guess which subs their training data comes from, r/relationships etc. Those trying to use them for other means are comparatively less frequent.

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

#720

Post by nineteen999 »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #543
nineteen999 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have forgotten that the ruling class requires tax payers to fund their incomes. If we're all out of work, there's nobody to buy their products and keep them rich.

Not sure this equation works out. If demand for labor goes towards zero it really means there is no demand. In other words, when AI and robots fulfil every desire of their owners there really is no need for “tax payers”

If you really think 8 billion people are going to not tear the arms and legs off their overlords and their robot minions before that you're completely daft.
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