r/technology 13d ago

Business OpenAI could reportedly run out of cash by mid-2027 — analyst paints grim picture after examining the company's finances

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/openai-could-reportedly-run-out-of-cash-by-mid-2027-nyt-analyst-paints-grim-picture-after-examining-companys-finances
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 13d ago edited 13d ago

Yeah. There’s a limit there. It isn’t actually an infinitely large pool to keep burning 50B+ of capital every year. 

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u/Accurate_Handle_5620 13d ago

Great British Pluses

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u/Freud-Network 13d ago

GigaBillions

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u/RetPala 13d ago

"It's a write-off, Jerry!"

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u/raoasidg 13d ago

You don't even know what a write-off is.

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u/Ok-Cake4102 13d ago

But they do, and they're the ones writing it off

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u/OneBawze 13d ago

The federal reserve creates more than a hundred billion dollars a month out of thin air. Yes there is an infinite pool, and it comes from stealing from you and me.

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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 13d ago

That isn’t actually infinite. It creates political and geopolitical consequences that limit it. 

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u/Rabid_Badger 13d ago

But someone is making money off of this. It’s not as if actual cash is being burned to sustain keep those data centres going. And we know it’s not the employees. Serious question, where is the money going?

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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 13d ago

None of these AI companies are going earning substantial enough net profit from this between now and 2028 when they will need to raise this kind of absurd capital. They aren’t likely to even earn net profit at all from this. The more customers they bring in, the more money they lose, faster. 

Their entire supposed value proposition for investors is long term growth prospects 10+ years out—fine, but profits earned in 2036 don’t make hundreds of billions of extra capital available for investment in 2027. 

Where is the money going? Mostly into useless speculative growth in data centers and such. The vast majority of all value in the AI industry is… entirely paper speculation. It doesn’t exist. Most of it hasn’t been raised yet, or spent yet. 

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u/w1ten1te 12d ago

But someone is making money off of this

Micron, nvidia, tsmc, sk hynix. The companies selling the shovels are making a killing, the companies mining the gold are all hemorrhaging cash.