I don't know that OpenAI specifically is the weak link but this definitely adds to the argument that the entire sector is a wash with the same three or four companies passing around the same $50B over and over. OpenAI is just the link that seems most likely to break first.
If tomorrow Claude pricing changes and they start charging real API costs like 2000+ USD, and there is another service: "NotReallyClaude" that is a bit less good but 200 USD, then what would you do ?
I've seen this sentiment (OpenAI collapse imminent) a lot on Youtube and Reddit, but it somehow evaded me on here
Bad comments about OpenAI's long-term viability I've seen plenty here. But that's not the same as the people predicting one of the hottest companies right now will somehow suddenly run out of cash all on its own
Its hottest service by far is completely free, the vast majority of users of its free service aren't converting to users of its paid services (and often stop using the free service too because they were just tourists seeing what all the fuss was about, or they were compelled to use the free service by their employer), and its data center plans are an impossible money pit.
The fact it's become a household name internationally (giving it the appearance of success) can't save it from spending dramatically more money than it makes. It's been coasting on investments, but it's not even close to being actually profitable.
Huge or well-known companies have collapsed before, even though - because people become so used to them existing - it never quite feels like it will actually happen until it does.
I don't think they are going to collapse. But it was only a couple of years ago that many people thought OpenAI had a big (some thought insurmountable) lead in a race to dominate a winner take all markee. Some people did correctly state that OpenAI had no moat in those days so credit there where it's due.
Now it's looking like a competitive blood bath where ever increasing levels of investment is needed just to main market position. Their frontier models are SOTA for 4 weeks before a competitor comes and takes the crown. They are standing on much shakier ground than they were 2 years ago.
A competitive bloodbath plus OpenAI has investment valuing it like it will achieve agi rather than (merely) being a huge advancement in computing, but not a fundamental rewriting of how all work is done.
If nobody invested in OpenAI how long could they keep the lights on? They're not profitable yet, and a lot of the wealth that Sam Altman seems to be making revolves around strange circular deals.
By comparison, Anthropic is projected to break even in 2028. Google's Gemini is already profitable.
What source do you have the Gemini is profitable? Are you referring only to the chat app, or to Google'a AI Ventures division? Or including Google Cloud AI related revenue?
Not agreeing with the parent, but that hardly matters. Google has a real business, advertising, that brings in $400 billion a year and income around $150B. They can afford to throw away tens of billions every year while still remaining immensely profitable and quite solid as a business. OpenAI has no such income to spend so it's as the above comments reflect, entirely unsustainable while Google's spending on AI is a drop in the bucket for them.
I didn't really realize how big Gemini was until I saw that Qualia was using it, they apparently used 0.01% of Geminis total tokens (100 billion) in about 3 months, they're in production with the title and escrow industry, so that's a great deal of data going through Gemini, unlike some chat subscription this is all API driven, which I doubt Google is charging at a loss for.
This does not at all tell us Gemini is profitable or driving 15% of its profits. The article does not mention profits even once. It then goes on to bizarrely compare Gemini's monthly active users to Open AI's weekly active ones.
Indeed, that article doesn't support a single part of that claim.
It kinda feels like an LLM-generated article that another LLM picked as a "citation", and then no human bothered to check if it actually said what the LLM said it did.
And, really, advergroup.com? Who sites an advertising agency as if it's a reliable resource?
"AdverGroup Web Design and Creative Media Solutions is a full service advertising agency that delivers digital marketing services. We manage Google Ad Word campaigns and/or Meta Ad Campaigns for local clients in Chicago, Las Vegas and their surrounding suburbs."
So credible a resource on Gemini's performance/profitability... /sarc
But yeah it doesn't even actually say anything about profits, let alone attribute any specific percentage of profits to Gemini. It just vague marketing copy.
The title and escrow industry is using Gemini (via Qualia Clear) enough so that Qualia accounts for 100 billions of token usage in about 3 months. Just because you don't see who is using it, and how, doesn't mean that when the dust settles, the people actually using AI for real purposes wont keep using AI. I'm not sure which AI models big pharma is using, but there's already at least one new pharmaceutical drug in the secondary testing phase, showing strong results.
There will definitely be room for AI. OpenAI is just not really showing that they care about a particular business model. Probably a strong indicator that Sam Altman is probably the worst person to lead that company. Anthropic will be profitable before OpenAI ever will be.
Gemini is in the green in terms of spending / income ratio FYI. I'm not talking about stocks.
Maybe you should get your news from a different source. Personally I prefer raw sources. I watch every official press briefing to hear from the horses mouth. You come to find that regardless of who is president news orgs put their own spin on it and you miss things they dont cover. Its all streamed on official government accounts.
Lmao, press briefings from the office of the führer is such a solid source to base your reality off of.
By the way if Kamala, Biden or Newsom was in office id also call them führer.
We live in a technocratic authoritarian state, the worlds largest prison population, the most police executions, we are actively sponsoring multiple genocides, we've killed over one million civilions in the middle east in two decades.
our politicians on both sides will go out of their way to protect pedophilic members of the ruling class...
But you want to tell us we're exaggerating or interpreting a reality that doesnt exist, i think youre the one who's been convinced through the regimes doublespeak that everythings alright.
Please revaluate. The US government is literally the 4th reich and actively committing halocausts on multiple fronts.
Do you know any history? You dishonor the people who died from horrible atrocities in WWII to make some glib performative political posturing. It's shameful behavior. Do better. Be better.
WWII didn’t start overnight. The Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as “The Brownshirts,” have a strong similarity to what we’re seeing with ICE and CBP. The SA were Hitler’s enforcers before the SS, during the 1920s and early 1930s. They were eventually usurped by the SS during “Night of the Long Knives” where SA leadership were executed by the SS. Largely because Hitler had felt threatened by the power Ernst Röhm had amassed (among other reasons). And the SA, like ICE, was made up largely of untrained sycophants and thugs who enjoy violence. They committed violence, harassed citizens, and had no consequences for doing so. They were also instrumental in laying the foundation for the genocide and atrocities committed by the Nazi party.
It’s not a dishonor to their memories, or the atrocities committed, to call that out. It is not a dishonor to say there are stark and real similarities between the way the US is operating and treating civilians.
I personally find the opposite, IMHO it is dishonors their memories to refuse to acknowledge the similarities.
I’ve posted a comment similar to this one here before, and like how I ended it. I strongly encourage you to read about the history of Nazi Germany and how it came to happen. It wasn’t just a zero to death camps, it was 15 years in the making. That history is deeply shocking, as it is depressing, because the parallels and timelines are too similar for anything besides outright discomfort, sadness, and fear between it and the US. But without knowing it, we are ever more likely to repeat it.
One final thing to note: the US has a history of extreme violence, slave patrols and the treatment of non-whites of the 19th century were an inspiration for Hitler.
Nobody saw coming the huge demand for coding agents. Not even OpenAI or Anthropic themselves. Those were side projects just a year ago and now dominate token demand. And they keep rising.
Oh I do think they did see it, considering how good they are they've probably been a tuning focus for a while.
The signal the agent usage is sending though is that Anthropic is way ahead since all we hear about is Claude these days despite OpenAI spending so much more money, Antrophic is also out trialling vending machines,etc.
ChatGPT apart from generating text was a bit of a query/research tool but now that Google has their AI search augmentation shit somewhat together I'm not feeling much need for ChatGPT as a research partner.
So now the big question is, with coding and search niches curtailed, where will OpenAI be able to generate profits from to justify their insane spending?
the $30b investment from nvidia is instead of a previously-announced $100b investment from nvidia, so it's not like this is an entirely good-news story for OpenAI.
How much revenue have they generated? How about profit?
If investors keep throwing obscene money at OpenAI, sure, they can stay afloat forever. Can't argue with that. But if we're talking about a sustainable business, I still don't see it.
You'll always find someone claiming X or Y are close to collapse at any given time. As even a broken clock is right twice a day, eventually one of these predictions will randomly be proven correct. That person will then be elevated to a genius forecaster and rake in cash for a decade or two.
Actually it is the other way around; every upstart claims that their invention is the mostest revolutionariest thing ever. 99.9% of them are not. The nay sayers are right most of the time.
Recent high-profile examples include Segway, NFT, Crypto as a whole, pre-tranformers voice assistants and various "Design Thinking" projects like those Amazon prime buttons.
Free ChatGPT chat has made the company a household name, and helped it to persuade investors, but every single one of those free users costs the company money. Most of those free users have proved unwilling to convert to paid users, and adding ads to the free service promises to send it into the same enshittification death spiral so many other companies have fallen into.
Also, how on Earth would your grandma and parents not have heard of crypto? Crypto is frequently front page news, even in print newspapers. There have been crypto superbowl ads. Are they living under a rock?
Selling Shovels is quite lucrative whether there is an actual mining business or just a gold rush.
At one point Jensen Huang will be out (retired or forced by staginating sales) and can definitely look back on a very successful career. That much is certain.
