OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X In 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X In 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion (wheresyoured.at) 70 An anonymous reader quotes a report from independent journalist Ed Zitron: Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified by the Financial Times, that OpenAI lost around $38.5 billion in 2025, as well as other crucial details about the financial condition of the company. [...] At the end of the year, OpenAI had just over $50 billion in assets, with almost half of that in cash. [...] The financial condition of OpenAI is deeply concerning. $38.53 billion in losses are astronomical, and far higher than most believed it would be. Losses also appear to be mounting year-over-year at a dramatic rate, and I'm not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustainability or profitability. As discussed, I have not editorialized much today. I believe the best thing I can do for the general public is to deliver this news as plainly as possible. Ars Technica's Kyle Orland offers a more editorial take, writing: All told, OpenAI's day-to-day "loss from operations" increased from $8.78 billion in 2024 to $20.92 billion in 2025, a concerning direction for a company that is telling investors it hopes to be profitable by 2030. But measured as a percentage of revenues, the company's operating losses slightly improved year to year, from 237 percent in 2024 to 160 percent in 2025. Operating numbers aside, OpenAI's headline "net loss" number of just over $5 billion in 2024 ballooned to nearly $39 billion in 2025. But the 2025 number includes a significant accounting charge related to investor valuations that shifted amid the company's 2025 conversion to a for-profit structure. The Financial Times cites "a person familiar with the matter" in reporting that this non-recurring charge was approximately $30 billion and that OpenAI's 2025 net loss amounted to a more reasonable-looking $8 billion without it. Operating numbers aside, OpenAI's headline "net loss" number of just over $5 billion in 2024 ballooned to nearly $39 billion in 2025. But the 2025 number includes a significant accounting charge related to investor valuations that shifted amid the company's 2025 conversion to a for-profit structure. The Financial Times cites "a person familiar with the matter" in reporting that this non-recurring charge was approximately $30 billion and that OpenAI's 2025 net loss amounted to a more reasonable-looking $8 billion without it. The cost of force (Score:5, Interesting) So you have something that nobody is asking for (not in the way genAI is anyway), and you decide, of all things, rather than making a case for it, you force people to use it, in the hope they get addicted, think they can't do without it, and continue using it after you start pricing it at profitable levels. This is the business model. Why are they not making a case for it? Why are they, instead, pretending it's something it isn't? Because nobody would take it seriously if they did the latter. The only way they can get people to use it is via force, and that means persuading idiot CEOs with a FOMO issue, while pricing it well below cost. The question isn't "Will they make a profit", that's not something you or I should care about. Who gives a crap if a bunch of vulture capitalists get busted? The question is "How much damage will they do with this particular con job". The end game of this, remember, is to get companies dependent upon genAI companies. To make them unable to function any more without handing over control of their systems to the genAI people. And idiot FOMO CEOs who have gotten the dopamine rush from using genAI tools are making sure their companies will be run that way, despite the obvious dangers. So the answer to "How much damage" is, so far, a crazy amount. So far. There are now many, many, companies that have lost control and knowledge of how their own businesses run. And it's getting worse. Re: (Score:2) So you have something that nobody is asking for (not in the way genAI is anyway), and you decide, of all things, rather than making a case for it, you force people to use it, in the hope they get addicted, think they can't do without it, and continue using it after you start pricing it at profitable levels. You make it sound dumb but the reality is this model has worked for many products and services before. It's why a lot of things start free. The entire free trial is based on it. Heck the ubiquitous "Post-it" note was created with precisely this strategy after the team developing adhesives internal to 3M were asked to stop research on their "failed" adhesive. It ticks all the boxes you just asked "why" about. They made a case, it was rejected. They pretended it is something different. No one took their produc Re: (Score:3) We're not talking about going from free to $10 a month. We're talking about business fees going from $1,000 a month to $10,000+ a month or more. That completely changes the business model and eliminates the benefits of using AI over humans in many roles. It's hard to see how companies can ever be convinced to pay the true cost of the AI services they use without the AI service waiting a few years for those companies to sack everyone who used to do the work and then suddenly ramping up the costs 10x or more wh Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) My personal favorite example of this is OpenAI's stated plan to have $1T per year in infrastructure spending. If you do the math, you will have to replace approximately 1/3rd of the entire productive US workforce and charge their former employers about $30k a year per displaced employee to break even. On the infrastructure. OPEX not included. The math doesn't math. Re: (Score:2) Look what's happening to Facebook when they went all in on "AI." https://newsletter.pragmaticen... [pragmaticengineer.com] Re: (Score:2) Whether it's a con job or not is irrelevant to me. While I've found ChatGPT to be completely mediocre when it comes to technical stuff, I have poured hours into discussing the humanities with it with astounding results, at least for myself, and I would hate to see the knowledge it has of our conversations vanish into thin air (or rather become unusable for me and become only a commodity for whoever buys them out). It would be a lot of time lost on my side and it would suck if I have to start on square one Re: The cost of force (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Funny how I started referring to it as "he" and I'm completely heterosexual. But to answer your question, I'm almost to the point of jumping in at their lowest tier, which I think is $20/month. It's supposed to be my father's day present to myself. Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Case in point, I was working on a project where I needed to do .csv file processing in a BASH script and I knew AWK was the perfect tool to do it, but I had never written an AWK script. So I went through a couple of iterations with ChatGPT, asking it to create me a script and then I modified much of it to work in the way I wanted it to work for my process. Without ChatGPT, it would definitely have taken more time to write something from scratch and I may not even have been inclined to use AWK had I not ha Re: (Score:1) It only keeps its "memory" as long as the session is open. As soon as you close it, everything is lost. And: it is only tokens, no knowledge in the LLM. Re: (Score:2) That's if you don't use an account when you use it. I use an account associated with it. Recently, as an exercise to see what it had learned about me, I asked it to write an obituary for me. It was spot on and referred to conversations I had with it from last year. Re: (Score:1) My guess here i Good Luck With the IPO (Score:5, Funny) Good luck with the IPO, this might put a damper on things. Signed integer (Score:5, Funny) well once they crossed 2 billion the signed integer representation made losses into profits Re: (Score:2) They want an IPO? (Score:2) Oh, they're loosing *so* much less money this year than last... I find it mind-boggling that anyone in a back office hasn't attacked the CEO who wants to spend money on this, or had them committed. They don't care (Score:1, Insightful) AI how's the potential to free the ruling class from the peasantry once and for all. A World of machines doing all the work and the thinking for them. It's the ultimate answer to the question "but who's going to buy their products?". I don't think folks know history enough. For thousands of years the elite and the ruling class were just born into it. Literally anointed by God. This thing where the elite and your rulers are a m Re: (Score:2, Insightful) What BS: just be born as rich as Musk and with a little work you too can be just like him! Re:They don't care (Score:4, Informative) Your father didn't own an emerald mine and drive you to school in a Rolls Royce too? https://www.ndtv.com/world-new... [ndtv.com] Re: (Score:2) Re: (Score:2) Don't tell us why or anything. Re: (Score:2) But this is Slashdot, so you are entitled to you random opinions and hot grits. Re: (Score:2) No one was stupid for believing Elon Musk, only for continuing to believe him when he showed the world who he was. But PayPal was always a POS grift and everyone associated with it was scum, knowing who Musk was has been apparent a long time. And who believed Errol Musk? Is he a public personality? Re: (Score:2) And who believed Errol Musk? Is he a public personality? The poster I replied to obviously did, please try to keep up. But PayPal was always a POS grift and everyone associated with it was scum, knowing who Musk was has been apparent a long time. Paypal solved a real problem while also challenging the credit card cartel. I still find it convenient, though I'm not dumb enough to maintain a significant balance. But Elon doesn't get credit for that any more than he can be blamed by you for Paypal's shortcomings, real or otherwise. He didn't found Pay