The $20B difference is based on an accounting fraud. $50B vs $70B is like if GM would count the total of what buyers pay for cars ($70B) instead of their real revenue ($50B) of what their dealers pay them. Monumental fraudster BS came out overnight to resume the bubble frenzy though.
Teeter harder, I need to upgrade my graphics card.
This feels like a nothing burger. It either won’t affect them or the government will bail them out.
Hopefully, I will be able to pick up x4 RTX Pros and 2TB of DDR5 RDIMM after ClosedAI dies. I would like to run local open models like Kimi.
Qwen Next has been helpful in getting an old game to run on modern Windows - getting the graphics to render properly, adding support for Xbox shoulder triggers, and so on. While I probably could flounder my way through, just having the AI handle things as I sleep overnight is much appreciated.
The more AI power that individuals can own, the better it is for the everyday person.
Basically, the AI lab told backers to expect revenues approaching $50 billion — far shorter than the explosive $70 billion number reported previously.
Though that $70 billion figure was also based on leaked investor memos, OpenAI wasn’t in any hurry to deny it, digging itself into a $20 billion hole.
So they told investors they’d make $70b and now they’re bringing down the forecast to $50b . $50b is still insane, that’s more revenue then any other software company except Microsoft (and probably anthropic), next closest is Salesforce with $41b, and Salesforce built that revenue over decades. Open AI finished 2025 with $13b in revenue, that’s nearly 4x growth in a year on more then 10 billion in revenue, that has never been done before.
Idk if this is a sign of a bubble collapsing just because it’s record setting growth and revenue aren’t as explosive as they initially said. It is still very much explosive, but more a fission bomb then an h bomb. It seems the market agrees, Nvidia is down ~1% on this news, but still up 5% on this month and 20% yoy.
The bubble part is the extremely high losses, even before hiding training expenses as assets that become worthless the next month after a new version release. Also monumental promises that they will require massive new fundraising for, that fewer people understand remain possibly sustainable.
“revenue” that’s propped up by the government and ignores other factors, such as overall expenses, competing open source models, and non-realized assets.
The difference between Microsoft and OpenAI or Anthropic is that Microsoft has a profit model.
There’s absolutely no way that the big LLM companies can make enough profit to overcome their expenses in the next decade even, especially since the technology on the open front only continues to improve. That’s why the LLM bros keep hyping it up via fear mongering and criminal activities like hacking - to keep selling the illusion that it’s AI.
50B is annualized revenue, accrued revenue will be almost certainly be quite a bit lower this year.
Tech companies love reporting ARR because it is always bigger than GAAP revenue (if the business is growing at all).
It’s not annualized in the traditional sense. They take their highest revenue day and multiply it by 365.
That… Doesn’t make sense does it? Like apart from fraud what’s the point of doing it like that?
yeah $20 imaginary dollerydoos were shaved off the $70 anticipated imaginary dollerydoos, it’s all so idiotic
Good point. It is important to keep things in perspective.
Idk if this is a sign of a bubble collapsing just because it’s record setting growth and revenue aren’t as crazy as they initially said.
That’s because you’re thinking about the situation rationally, which isn’t something the market is known for.
Just burst already!
All the AI companies know it. The first to get caught out about it will stand to lose the most funding.
Sounds like it’s almost bailout time again.
I favor incarceration with no bail.
I favour incineration
Let it pop! Let it pop! No bailouts for billionaires. Just let the fucking system collapse. I’ll happily go back to a trade a barter system of some kind.
Pop pop pop!
I’ll be fine, my mortgage is fixed for 4 more years before any damage it causes to the economy can seriously effect me. That is a problem for me in 4 years time, not me today.
Uh oh…
Does this news have anything to do with the November elections?
The AI bubble will pop just like the housing one did.
Never.
This is bullshit people like tontel themselves so they can do nothing about it and wait for it to fix itself.
“We have to stop AI before it kills everyone, but we need the government to do it so we don’t lose investors.”
I dunno, iheartmedia was heavily in debt for over a decade. I don’t think this bubble is popping anytime soon
How long has AI been “teetering on the brink“?
Depends if you’re asking people who are informed or news headlines. The informed people have been saying the AI bubble is set to burst around Q2-Q3 2027. That’s when loan obligations come due and the majority of investors are set for payouts.
The news will say it’s happening everyday, just like Trump is just about to die everyday, or MAGA is “turning against him” everyday according to the articles.
Most of the historical boondoggles took about 5 years to work their way out. We are on year 3. If that’s any guide, we got a whole lot more electric boogaloo left to play.
Most boondoggles don’t burn trillions of dollars. AI is starting to hit a wall already because there just isn’t any more money. It’s why there’s this desperate push to go public even though their financials are a dumpster fire.
As a percentage of Capex to GDP it’s about a third of way to where the railway mania was at during its peak. There’s room to run. The difference between then and now is that all the spending is concentrated in a handful of companies.
Right. It’s literally everyday it’s brought up. Yet here we are, still using it, still funding the losses.
Rome hasn’t collapsed in a day.
This article conveniently ignores the fact that Anthropic is reporting a second profitable quarter to investors.
“profitable”
https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/
Uh huh. And that’s despite government propping and no returns on stocks on top of possibly cooking the books.
I suspect we won’t know their real state of finances until they go public and are held to a higher standard for their accounting practices: https://www.wheresyoured.at/anthropics-profitability-swindle/
Yeah.
I don’t like Anthropic’s long term prospects, but OpenAI is specifically in trouble, near term.
Their whole premise was becoming a Facebook-style “where else are you gonna go?” captured market on the consumer side, and that is clearly not happening. They wanted an enterprise monopoly, and those business customers are looking elsewhere.
Their ass is cooked.
Even if openai tanked tomorrow it would just be bought by Microsoft and become copilot AI.
The failure of the company is bad for current investors but it’s not a public company and as others have mentioned there is not yet enough instability in the rest of the industry. Google is still trucking along without issue even if they don’t make the news and people are still giving Muse access to all their shit.
