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ArsTechnica has a nice graph showing it https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/leaked-financial-docs-sho... And I believe this is the actual source https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
Unless they increased their spending even more, "all they have to do" is cover 2025 with the 2026 revenue?
Why would revenue continue to grow at this rate? Enterprises are becoming increasingly aware that the best models can be used for planning and then cheaper models for execution - all the way to local models for some tasks. Add in increasing competition from Chinese models… I’m not convinced this revenue growth is guaranteed.
building a Rube Goldberg machine on Chinese models might work okay, but it will be brittle, and is unlikely to work as well as the latest and greatest model from OpenAI
the demand for intelligence is nearly limitless
These numbers show that OpenAI is boned. They have no path to profitability and if they raise prices or cut services they will strangle their golden goose. They could have existed indefinitely as a service layer that was reliant on other companies feeling charitable, like Firefox, but they also wanted to get rich.
A year ago, even 6 months ago, folks would have been still hypnotized by the hype and they would have pulled it off. Today too many people see a burning ship of cash and no moat to justify the burn. The story just isn’t there anymore.
"OpenAI generated $13.07 billion in revenue in 2025" Considering just four years ago they were a research lab with hardly any revenue at all, and no corporate muscles for earning revenue, I think that is a very impressive number. (Sure, they're losing a whole lot of money too. Same goes for almost every other hyper-growth company in the history of tech.)
They gave up on video because three separate Chinese companies were kicking their ass (and for cheaper).
Google has a better image model in the majority of cases. Much faster, too.
Claude Opus and Fable are like a billion times better. It's not even funny. Codex can't do Rust at all.
What does that leave them? Ads in ChatGPT? I've started to just rely on Google search blended with Gemini answers now because it's faster and doesn't spit out a 20-page essay of useless effusive prose.
Open source models will eat them from the bottom.
Will those enterprise contracts be renewed in a market full of alternatives?
There's nothing sticky about this company.
They're making a necklace with Jony Ive though, I guess?
Financial Times: > A person familiar with the matter said the large majority of that jump reflected a non-cash accounting charge linked to the company’s previous structure rather than its underlying operations. > Before OpenAI’s switch late last year to become a public benefit corporation, investors in the company received convertible interest rights rather than conventional equity. Under US accounting rules, those i…
It's not an issue if you're tracking the cash flow of the business or it's overall viability regardless of ownership structure. These book losses are just recognizing that the business has a higher market value so their ownership dilution commitments reduce the present value of the company more.
13 billion in revenue, 7.5 in cost of revenue. Can we finally put to bed the idea that inference is subsidized?
We have no idea what these terms mean and Ed Zitron specifically points out there is no explanation for what they mean in the reviewed documents. Given that, no, this question is still open.
You can just run his content through AI to get a more balanced flash take. Example:
> Zitron repeatedly describes OpenAI as having "removed" costs — $3.74B in 2024, $17.87B and $3.95B in 2025 — via "net loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital," and says "it's unclear what this means." This is standard consolidated-statement mechanics, not a maneuver. When a parent consolidates entities it doesn't wholly own, the slice of losses belonging to other equity holders is split out as "noncontrolling interests." Nothing is removed or hidden; the total loss is unchanged, it's just allocated. Framing it as OpenAI "lowering" its loss "by removing costs" implies something sketchy where there's only routine GAAP. Saying "I will not speculate further" while leaving that insinuation hanging is the rhetorically convenient version of restraint.
For what it's worth, I think AI is a "bubble" and am not convinced at the long-term sustainability or viability of many of these companies but that doesn't mean that every armchair critic actually has the financial expertise to make accurate arguments.
I mean, his whole sensationalized 8X headline is based on a non-cash conversion charge, which is literally the biggest straw man you can find in the financials. He chose it because he's editorializing even as he leads his post with "I am not going to do very much editorializing". Hilarious.
13 billion in revenue, 7.5 in cost of revenue. Can we finally put to bed the idea that inference is subsidized?
It is subsidized by gov contracts. Everyone who has common sense immediately said the real money is Altman getting into the governments pants which is why he and Brockman lobby so hard. You take away those contracts and OpenAI is dead in the water.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the point. There was a lot of debate around if inference was subsidized or not. And that's a huge point to confirm in the public discourse.
Sure, but being able to pay for inference and nothing but inference out of revenue leads to what end?