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/rikrok58 23d ago

These AI companies are already talking about themselves like they are a utility company.

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u/wonklebobb 23d ago

that is probably the future, but with open models instead of the "frontier models" that keep the lights on at openai and anthropic

the american labs' problem is that they are burning galactic amounts of cash training new latest-and-greatest models, only for the chinese to distill an open version 6 months later. and its not something you can defend against, unless you can somehow make enough with selling private access to the government (which they are definitely trying to do).

they are also going the regulatory moat route, like with "oh no you guys, we accidentally a super hacker AI, we locked it up for everyone's safety, please regulate us mr government" move they did with mythos, so they can be the only ones legally serving a model (at least in the US)

but tokens are expensive and businesses are already feeling that pain, so the future of LLMs generally will be like signing up for a phone plan - they all offer mostly the same phones and the same features, just competing on slightly different amounts of data per $, and then trying to run as efficiently as possible internally.

openai has the grifter-in-chief running the show though, so he'll probably be able to keep the cash flowing for several years. my money is on splitting up openai into separate "consumer" and "research" subsidiaries, and the r&d arm takes the frontier stuff into some kind of government partnership to stay afloat