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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

#91

Post by password54321 »

Alconicon wrote: post #85
password54321 wrote: post #49

Not sure why they put so much investment into videoSlop and imageSlop. Anthropic seems to be more focused at least.

Because OpenAI stands for AI leader. If Gemini can create or edit an image, chatgpt needs to be able to do this too. Who wants to copy&paste prompts between ai agents? Also if you want to have more semantics, you add image, video and audio to your model. It gets smarter because of it. OpenAI is also relevant bigger than antropic and is known as a generic 'helper'. Antropic probably saw the benefits of being more focu…

>Also if you want to have more semantics, you add image, video and audio to your model. It gets smarter because of it.

I think you are confusing generation with analysis. As far I am aware your model does not need to be good at generating images to be able to decode an image.

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

#92

Post by zozbot234 »

andsoitis wrote: post #5

In a parallel universe, governments invest in the compute/datacenters (read: infra), and let model makers compete on the same playing field.

Datacenters are not a natural monopoly, you can always build more. Beyond what the public sector itself might need for its own use, there's not much of a case for governments to invest in them.

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

#93

Post by candiddevmike »

piskov wrote: post #76
password54321 wrote: post #49

Not sure why they put so much investment into videoSlop and imageSlop. Anthropic seems to be more focused at least.

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.

If only 99% of the Internet was kitten videos and memes

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

#94

Post by serf »

marcellus23 wrote: post #29
cambrianentropy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a completely alternate dimension, a quarter of the capital being invested in AI literally just goes towards making sure everyone has quality food and water.

I'd rather live in a universe where that money is taken out of the military budget.

you'll never win that argument, but I absolutely agree.

people have no idea about how big the military and defense budgets worldwide are next to any other example of a public budget.

throw as many pie charts out as you want; people just can't see the astronomical difference in budgets.

I think it's based on how the thing works; a good defense works until it doesn't -- the other systems/budgets in place have a bit more of a graceful failure. This concept produces an irrationality in people that produces windfalls of cash availability.

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

#96

Post by acoustics »

jeffbee wrote: post #88

For what I use them for, the LLM market has become a two player game, and the players are Anthropic and Google. So I find it quite interesting that OpenAI is still the default assumption of the leader.

ChatGPT dominates the consumer market (though Nano Banana is singlehandedly breathing some life into consumer Gemini).

A small anecdote: when ChatGPT went down a few months ago, a lot of young people (especially students) just waited for it to come back up. They didn't even think about using an alternative.

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

#97

Post by shimman »

quantified wrote: post #82
nialv7 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if datacenters are built by the government, then i think it's fair to assume there will be some level of democratic control of what those datacenters will be used for.

What's the democratic control of existing resources? I would make the opposite assumption, it would be captured by the wealthiest interests.

This is literally the current system... adding more democratic controls is a good thing, the alternative is that only rich control these systems and would you look at it only the rich control these systems.

Uncanny really.

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

#98

Post by paulryanrogers »

toxic72 wrote: post #68
websiteapi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

should the government own all types of "public services"? e.g. search index, video serving infra, etc?

Public ownership of public services hmm?

Smells like socialism. Around here we privatize the profits and only socialize the costs. Like the impending bailout of the most politically connected AI companies.

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

#99

Post by mbreese »

Alconicon wrote: post #85
password54321 wrote: post #49

Not sure why they put so much investment into videoSlop and imageSlop. Anthropic seems to be more focused at least.

Because OpenAI stands for AI leader. If Gemini can create or edit an image, chatgpt needs to be able to do this too. Who wants to copy&paste prompts between ai agents? Also if you want to have more semantics, you add image, video and audio to your model. It gets smarter because of it. OpenAI is also relevant bigger than antropic and is known as a generic 'helper'. Antropic probably saw the benefits of being more focu…

I think you're partially right, but I don't think being an AI leader is the main motivation -- that's a side effect.

I think it's important to OpenAI to support as many use-cases as possible. Right now, the experience that most people have with ChatGPT is through small revenue individual accounts. Individual subscriptions with individual needs, but modest budgets.

The bigger money is in enterprise and corporate accounts. To land these accounts, OpenAI will need to provide coverage across as many use-cases as they can so that they can operate as a one-stop AI provider. If a company needs to use OpenAI for chat, Anthropic for coding, and Google for video, what's the point? If Google's chat and coding is "good enough" and you need to have video generation, then that company is going to go with Google for everything. For the end-game I think OpenAI is playing for, they will need to be competitive in all modalities of AI.

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

#100

Post by piskov »

nine_k wrote: post #79
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.

Are the posters of effing kitten videos a customer base with a significant LTV? (The obvious well-paying market would be erotic / furry / porn, but it's too toxic to publicly touch, at least in the US.)

Openrouter stats already mention 52% usage is roleplay.

As for photo/video very large number of people use it for friends and family (turn photo into creative/funny video, change photo, etc.).

Also I would think photoshop-like features are coming more and more in chatgpt and alike. For example, “take my poorly-lit photo and make it look professional and suitable for linkedin profile”

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