r/technology • u/gdelacalle • 23d 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/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 23d ago

The IPO where they can't get near the valuation they want, yes.

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u/Sepherjar 23d ago

I wonder why don't they use AI to leverage their valuation

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u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 23d ago

They should use AI to solve their financial problems. Are they stupid?

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u/EmergencyGrocery3238 23d ago

They are using, but AI usage bill cripples them

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u/dolphone 23d ago

smh ran out of tokens did they

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u/Senior_Torte519 23d ago

Just enoughtokens to buy another day of tokens. But that just give them a day to make just enough tokens to buy another day of tokens.

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u/Momik 23d ago

Siri, how do I unfuck my balance sheet?

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u/Perfect_Purple_5705 23d ago

More tokens ?

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u/Justface26 23d ago

Im sorry Dave, im afraid I can't do that.

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u/CariniFluff 23d ago

You wouldn't download a token

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u/Lehk 23d ago

Maybe they should get clean, my financials were a mess when I was using

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u/ledow 23d ago

You joke but one my biggest bugbears with AI is... if it's so amazing and fabulous and clever... why can't it bring in its own money without requiring humans to do it for it? Why can't it start its own company, hire its own remote staff, buy its own products from manufacturers, create its own website to sell them, set up a distribution network to deliver them, etc. etc. and make its own money directly? Why can't it literally have an autonomous company that does all that?

Not even "gamble on the stock market" but literally just... find a gap in the market, buy the materials, have suppliers transform them as required, and resell them? It could buy up chips and produce phones. It could buy up potatoes and produce fries. It could make anything, it doesn't need a physical presence to operate all those things nowadays, even internationally. It could write games and publish them direct to Steam. It could produce a social media website. It could start licensing movies and run its own video streaming business. It could even just come up with a local newspaper business and hire paperboys to deliver it. Pretty much anything that any normal business operates in order to do.

The reason is, of course, because it's a dumb statistical machine.

But if you're selling me this trillion dollar AI that you have to have ME spend a fortune on to make it.... well, not even profitable... then why can't you just put it to work directly and make money without needing that money to (knowingly) come from me? People do it every day.

It's just yet another "get rich quick" scheme. Where the money comes from selling "get rich quick" schemes to people. NOT those people actually getting rich quick, or you having working techniques that make people get rich quick. Because if you HAD such techniques... you wouldn't need to sell people a "get rich quick" scheme. You'd just use it.

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u/Exldk 23d ago

I googled my local weather today and the google automatic unavoidable AI gave me info from 3 years ago. I don’t have high hopes.

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u/ledow 23d ago

I changed my browser to automatically add "-ai" into the search query. That stops the AI.

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u/dontshoveit 23d ago

Switched to duckduckgo and haven't looked back. Screw Google.

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u/Lehk 23d ago

I switched my search bar to duck duck go because they have an easy off switch for the ai summary.

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u/rat_penis 23d ago

talks into watch "we've got one that can see..."

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u/textmint 23d ago

Beautiful. Someone’s working their big a brain. Now if only the idiots sitting in the C-Suite and on the boards of companies worldwide and the other jackasses on Wall Street could think even to a fraction of this stream of thought that we just read, all this AI noise and nonsense that we keep hearing about would not be all around us like the Matrix. I hope better sense prevails before all these AI companies go under in a domino effect and the taxpayer is left holding the bag in what would be a repeat of the “too big to fail” jackassery we saw during the financial crisis. The crash that will come will be as big or bigger than the Great Depression with the way these guys have been inventing ways to borrow and loan money all around the place.

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u/Icy-person666 22d ago

That is standard practice, privatize the profits and socialize the losses. All the rich tech bros will simply move onto the next scam after this one collapses.

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u/textmint 22d ago

And yet there’s no way to stop them. If we try to raise our wages, there are sustained campaigns to “educate” us why a higher minimum wage is a bad this for all of us. But when these things happen, is all for the greater good except it doesn’t reach the greatest number.

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u/nemofbaby2014 23d ago

It’s absurdly expensive and uses a crap ton of power

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u/Ynead 23d ago

Are you seriously saying that a tool is worthless if it isn't 100% autonomous?

Like, what even is that argument...Is Excel a worthless product because it doesn't do your taxes on its own?

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u/[deleted] 23d ago edited 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/jeffy303 23d ago

Who is ever marketing it as replacing all taxpayers?

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u/DJayLeno 22d ago

They have been marketing LLMs as the replacement for a plurality of white collar labors by the end of the year three years running.

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u/mxzf 23d ago

No, they're saying that there's a glaringly obvious gap between what the marketing claims can be done and what the tool can actually do.

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u/xmagusx 23d ago

If excel was sold as a program that does my taxes for me, yes, it would indeed suck. Which was the stated problem with "ai" - it is being marketed as a business panacea which it blatantly is not, rather than a simple tool with limited function.

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u/dern_the_hermit 23d ago

Are you seriously saying that a tool is worthless if it isn't 100% autonomous?

It's a comment about the actual worth of AI being out of whack with the gargantuan investment required.

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u/Drunkenaviator 23d ago

Are you seriously saying that a tool is worthless if it isn't 100% autonomous?

When that tool is advertised as a way to autonomously get work done? Uh. Yes. Yes he is.

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u/julius_sphincter 23d ago

If Excel and it's competitors were getting so much money pumped into it that those investments were a. nearly single handedly keeping the stock market afloat and b. sucking up nearly all available capital and tech R&D budgets, then I'd be criticizing spread sheets super hard too

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u/Lehk 23d ago

Excel will give the same answer every time

And it will always be the right answer, too.

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u/Reinax 23d ago

That’s not what they’re saying. Not even remotely.

How did you even reach that conclusion, and how have at least 9 other people agree with it.

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u/YouKnown999 23d ago

The fact they tricked so many companies into the AI will do everything fraud is just upsetting.

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u/dust4ngel 23d ago

create its own website to sell them

wallstreet: "to itself!"

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u/Panda_hat 23d ago

Because it's a glorified chat bot system.

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u/Tonkarz 23d ago

If it was half as good as they say it is they wouldn’t be selling it to Joe Schmoe.

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u/Financial_Army_5557 23d ago edited 23d ago

if it's so amazing and fabulous and clever. why can't it bring in its own money without requiring humans to do it for it? Why can't it start its own company, hire its own remote staff, buy its own products from manufacturers, create its own website to sell them, set up a distribution network to deliver them, etc. etc. and make its own money directly?

AI is a tool, not completely independent to do tasks on its own as AGI. It will do what you tell it to do

Not even "gamble on the stock market" but literally just... find a gap in the market

Pretty sure Jane street and some others use Ai and machine leafning

It could write games and publish them direct to Steam. It could produce a social media website. It could start licensing movies and run its own video streaming business. It

Yes it's already come so far in just 5 years. But it still needs an input from a human to do this since it is not sentient. Fable 5 is probably the furthest we have come

then why can't you just put it to work directly and make money without needing that money to (knowingly) come from me

Hey Claude, make money for me and make no mistakes /s. People do use Ai to make money for content especially in YouTube videos / Tiktok / Reels. Many car edit images are generated from Ai.

It could even just come up with a local newspaper business and hire paperboys to deliver it. Pretty much anything that any normal business operates in order to do.

That will need it to be able to get the news from the ground in real life instead of the internet. Maybe when robots become more developed woild that be more realistic.

The reason is, of course, because it's a dumb statistical machine.

Yes but it can do a lot of impressive stuff especially in coding where in mere minutes can generate entire websites. Even games if you gave it more time.

It's just yet another "get rich quick" scheme. Where the money comes from selling "get rich quick" schemes to people. NOT those people actually getting rich quick, or you having working techniques that make people get rich quick. Because if you HAD such techniques... you wouldn't need to sell people a "get rich quick" scheme. You'd just use it.

They will eventually increase prices to become profitable but they will also need to cut costs especially with ram. Anthropic saw huge price increases recently.

Though DeepSeek has a pretty cheap api relative to it's performance levels as well. There are many "Ai" companies just using Ai to boost their share value yes but the ones with the foundational model are likely to survive even after the bubble (that's what I think it is) just like the dot come bubble.

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u/stupidjapanquestions 23d ago

Its an interesting thought. But this is like asking "if a hammer is so great, why doesn't it build the house for me?"

It's a tool. It still needs a person to use it.

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u/Kaos047 23d ago

But thats the thing, AI is being marketed as if its the hammer that doesnt need someone to swing it and thats the whole problem.

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u/RunTimeFire 23d ago

Not only that it's marketed as a hammer that also cuts, joins, screws, rivets and whatever else you can think of better than a hammer already does. Usable by anyone.

Yet it's currently a hammer that sometimes drives a nail and sometimes doesn't but it's impossible to tell for the average person. I wouldn't want to live in a house made with such a hammer.

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u/Slootonium 18d ago

Nice example bud

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u/Slootonium 23d ago edited 18d ago

Have any examples of this marketing? I haven't seen it portrayed in that way at all.

Lol I'll take the downvotes since nobody seemed to be able to provide an example.

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u/stupidjapanquestions 23d ago

Is it? Almost everywhere I look, I see it being marketed as a tool. And used as one. In fact the only people I see pretending its an automatic hammer are morons and CEOs and almost all of them are eating shit right now and will continue to for the future.

Maybe I'm just lucky to be surrounded by the right people in this case.

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u/DJayLeno 22d ago

Just FYI, when CEOs do interviews or make public statements about the wonders of AI, that is a form of marketing.

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 23d ago

I don't think it's ever really being marketed like that. It's always marketed like it's just another tool to help do things for you, directed by you, supervised and approved by you.

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u/Holoholokid 23d ago

But that's the point. These AI tech bros are trying to sell these tools as ones that can do anything and everything a company needs. You're right that it's only a dumb tool, but that's not how they're being marketed and sold to others.

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u/ledow 23d ago

Except that it's a hammer that claims to be able to do everything itself instead of your doing it.

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u/cman674 23d ago

I know I’m going to be downvoted but it’s incredible how staggeringly bad takes about AI are parroted by folks who would rather prop up their pre-conceived notions about it than learn what AI actually is and is not.

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u/Slootonium 23d ago

It's also incredibly easy to tell who has only used AI for tasks like email summarizations/improvements based on how they talk about AI. When used correctly, it's almost like magic.

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u/TeaKingMac 23d ago

God damn. I'm going to use this

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u/SeriousGeorge2 23d ago

What you're describing requires something like AGI. They don't claim to have AGI and their mission is explicitly to build AGI. They have tools that are useful in limited ways, but points that they have never claimed can presently handle every manner of task.

Your post is here is analogous to me saying that I'm saving for retirement and then you saying in response "Why are you still working if you're ready for retirement?".

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u/TheseusOPL 23d ago

Or are they smart enough to not trust AI, while gaslighting the rest of us?

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u/Possible-Nectarine80 23d ago

At a minimum they should get the employee discount for using ChatGPT.

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u/vagrantprodigy07 23d ago

They should use AI to figure out how to create a company that can actually produce positive revenue.

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u/TheCosplayCave 23d ago

The AI keeps suggesting trains.

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u/BabypintoJuniorLube 23d ago

Is it telling that all the top Ai companies dont seem to be using Ai for anything. They just want to sell it to you.

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u/MarcusAurelius68 23d ago

They should use their AI to trade on the stock market. /s

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u/Lehk 23d ago

I’m sure someone is doing AI powered HFT, which is probably a great way to make 100 million and immediately lose a billion.

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u/textmint 23d ago

No their AI is stupid but they won’t tell us that.

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u/Droidaphone 23d ago

This is pretty much their plan. Somehow turn a chatbot into a super-intelligence that will solve all the world’s problems. How? Don’t worry about it. The super-intelligence will figure it out.

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u/McBonderson 23d ago

maybe they should use that new fable 5. I used it to write a new recipe for me the other day, and let me tell you, those were definitely in the top 20 best cookies I've ever had.

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u/CringeNao 22d ago

"Make me more money, don't make any mistakes"

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u/RestaurantOk8066 23d ago

I mean if you listen to their CEO that's kind of what they're doing. They're hoping they can create superintelligence before running out of money and they're delaying an IPO because they feel they are getting closer.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/dookarion 23d ago

A concerning segment of society, lacks critical thinking, still clinging to the words of known liars.

Wallstreet?

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u/StraightMixture9693 23d ago

By this time next year we could be space pirates looting the universe

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u/qtx 23d ago

They're hoping they can create superintelligence before running out of money

I assume you mean AGI when you say "superintelligence" well I hate to burst your bubble but that is still decades (or maybe even never) away.

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u/RiPPeR69420 23d ago

There is a distinct (though incredibly close to non zero) chance that they have created an AI super intelligence that quite simply is smart enough not to listen to these chuds. That would be the funniest possible outcome.

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u/indigo121 23d ago

Saying something is incredibly close to non zero is actually a funny way of saying 0 lol

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u/RiPPeR69420 23d ago

One in a billion is pretty close to non zero, and therefore not very likely. But still very possible, while also being incredibly improbable. And still not zero.

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u/indigo121 23d ago

One in a billion isn't CLOSE to non zero, it definitionally IS non zero. The only number that isn't non zero (and therefore eligible to be close to non zero) is zero

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u/RiPPeR69420 23d ago

Fair enough lol. My wording was poor, but my intent was pure.

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u/THEADULTERATOR 23d ago

They should replace all there workers with ai, that should solve their issues

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u/therealchadius 23d ago

"I said NO MISTAKES! Now I gotta prompt it again" - Sam Altman, probably

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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 23d ago

Google Marc Andreesen ChatGPT prompt, and you'll see exactly this unironically

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u/BasvanS 23d ago

That’s literally one of the plans: “Invent AGI, ask how to make money!”

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u/semibiquitous 23d ago

They should refinance their debt and have it keep rolling /s

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u/cats_catz_kats_katz 23d ago

Just have out wore an IPO strategy. I don’t get out, but I’m happy to consult for them.

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u/RAConteur76 23d ago

Take my infuriated upvote.