Two economists were walking down the street when they spotted a giant dog turd on the ground.
One of them wanted to have some fun, so said to the other - "I'll give you $100 if you take a big bite of that turd".
His colleague figured $100 was a good chunk of cash, so did the deed. Feeling thoroughly humiliated, he pocketed the $100 and they carried on.
Further down the street they came upon another turd.
The angry economist now wanted revenge so made the same proposal back to his colleague, who also agreed and took a bite of the turd, earning back his $100.
Later one of them said to the other "you know, I can't help but feel we both ate shit for no reason."
His collegue replied "what do you mean? We raised the national GDP by $200."
I did upvote, it's witty, but it's a bit of a misrepresentation of how the economy works.
In practice, people don't tend to pay people to eat shit without gain. You are paying people to help you. Money gaslights everyone into helping each other, the most selfish people become the most selfless.
Of course, real capitalism is much more complex and much uglier than this fantasy. When certain people end up with long-term control of large piles of money, the whole thing gets distorted. They get make lots of money on interest without doing anything, and making other people eat more shit for scraps. That's the "capital" part of capitalism.
But the toy world-model that this joke is making fun of, is actually the one core positive aspect of capitalism and brings all the prosperity we have, tricking people into helping each other.
IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part.
From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI survives and can pull of their IPO but I just have that nagging feeling in my gut that their IPO will be rejected in much the same way that the WeWork IPO was rejected.
On the one hand you can look at these companies investing and take it as a signal that there is something there (in OpenAI) that's worth investing in. On the other hand all these companies that are investing are basically getting that investment back through spending commitments and such and are just using OpenAI as a proxy for what is essentially buying more revenue for themselves.
When their IPO hits later this year I hope that it's the former case and there's actually some good underlying fundamentals to invest in. But based on everything I've read, my gut is telling me they will eventually implode under the weight of their business model and spending commitments.
I'd assume the real trigger here is "reaching AGI," which would help OpenAI shrug off some of their Microsoft commitments thus making OpenAI models available on Amazon Bedrock. Which is what Amazon is really after.
There's this saying that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a big problem, but if you owe the bank 100 million dollars, the bank has a big problem.
Is the same thing true for corporations? At some point the numbers are so wild the entire economy must help you succeed? I don't mean "too big to fail" exactly, more like "so big eventual success is guaranteed at all costs"
Those are the same thing. The whole point of saying "too big to fail" is to evoke the moment in the housing crash where governments largely threw most of their citizens under the bus by bailing out banks rather than homeowners for the banks' wildly irresponsible decisions. "Too big to fail" means the government steps in and bails you out, and that phrase became popular because for many it was the final nail in the coffin for their trust in government
I wonder if there is "too big for IPO". Saudi Aramco in 2019 sold shares worth $25.6 billion in IPO. Even offering just 5% of OpenAI to public would shatter that record. Well, unless public isn't actually interested in investing such huge amounts.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yet Google is valued at a 10X multiple, Anthropic a 35X and OpenAI 100x revenue... Nothing abnormal about this at all, imagine think an extermely unprofitable autocomplete tool should be worth 100x revenue lmfao.
However, when youre entrenched with the military/gov like OpenAI (see discord/persona leaks) you're basically invinsible. Especially when that military is the reincarnation of Nazi Germany , and a fourth Reich (The USA).
OpenAI is another BS national security project larping as a private company, like facebook, like starlink ect ect. Hard to get congress to approve your mass surveillance programs so you get them funded through markets with fake entrepreneurs like Elon and Altman.
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.
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?
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.
Two economists were walking down the street when they spotted a giant dog turd on the ground.
One of them wanted to have some fun, so said to the other - "I'll give you $100 if you take a big bite of that turd".
His colleague figured $100 was a good chunk of cash, so did the deed. Feeling thoroughly humiliated, he pocketed the $100 and they carried on.
Further down the street they came upon another turd.
The angry economist now wanted revenge so made the same proposal back to his colleague, who also agreed and took a bite of the turd, earning back his $100.
Later one of them said to the other "you know, I can't help but feel we both ate shit for no reason."
His collegue replied "what do you mean? We raised the national GDP by $200."
The number is irrelevant. The fact is that work was done and was repaid with work.
Money was just the means of the transaction.
I did upvote, it's witty, but it's a bit of a misrepresentation of how the economy works.
In practice, people don't tend to pay people to eat shit without gain. You are paying people to help you. Money gaslights everyone into helping each other, the most selfish people become the most selfless.
Of course, real capitalism is much more complex and much uglier than this fantasy. When certain people end up with long-term control of large piles of money, the whole thing gets distorted. They get make lots of money on interest without doing anything, and making other people eat more shit for scraps. That's the "capital" part of capitalism.
But the toy world-model that this joke is making fun of, is actually the one core positive aspect of capitalism and brings all the prosperity we have, tricking people into helping each other.
IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part.
From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI survives and can pull of their IPO but I just have that nagging feeling in my gut that their IPO will be rejected in much the same way that the WeWork IPO was rejected.
On the one hand you can look at these companies investing and take it as a signal that there is something there (in OpenAI) that's worth investing in. On the other hand all these companies that are investing are basically getting that investment back through spending commitments and such and are just using OpenAI as a proxy for what is essentially buying more revenue for themselves.
When their IPO hits later this year I hope that it's the former case and there's actually some good underlying fundamentals to invest in. But based on everything I've read, my gut is telling me they will eventually implode under the weight of their business model and spending commitments.
Hopefully this will allow them to continue to provide me unreasonable amounts of compute for €20/month. Enjoying it while it lasts…
Have you tried to cancel recently?
Might save you €20 next month.
$110B at $840B post-money valuation for OpenAI vs
$30B at $380B post-money for Anthropic announced two weeks ago
This does not increase my confidence in OpenAI's future
Well Anthropic has said (a fairly weak but clear) no to DoW, I wonder who will say yes?
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/altman-openai-anthropic-pen...
> Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines in Pentagon fight
90% chance it's all PR but who knows
Never believe anything sam says
> Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met.
Those conditions are an IPO or reaching AGI [1].
Nvidia and SofBank will pay in installments.
Also very interesting that Microsoft decided to not invest in this round. A PR statement was made though [2].
[1] https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/02/26/amazon-to-invest...
[2] https://openai.com/index/continuing-microsoft-partnership/
Once they "reach AGI", will they have a big party on a carrier with a "Mission Accomplished" banner?
I'd assume the real trigger here is "reaching AGI," which would help OpenAI shrug off some of their Microsoft commitments thus making OpenAI models available on Amazon Bedrock. Which is what Amazon is really after.
So they’re getting in on the IPO.
Are they going to get stock for it or is it a PIPE?
Personally, I don’t think I want to get in on this at retail prices.
It can both be true at the same time that AI going to disrupt our world and that being an AI lab is a terrible business.
There's this saying that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a big problem, but if you owe the bank 100 million dollars, the bank has a big problem.
Is the same thing true for corporations? At some point the numbers are so wild the entire economy must help you succeed? I don't mean "too big to fail" exactly, more like "so big eventual success is guaranteed at all costs"
Those are the same thing. The whole point of saying "too big to fail" is to evoke the moment in the housing crash where governments largely threw most of their citizens under the bus by bailing out banks rather than homeowners for the banks' wildly irresponsible decisions. "Too big to fail" means the government steps in and bails you out, and that phrase became popular because for many it was the final nail in the coffin for their trust in government
I wonder if there is "too big for IPO". Saudi Aramco in 2019 sold shares worth $25.6 billion in IPO. Even offering just 5% of OpenAI to public would shatter that record. Well, unless public isn't actually interested in investing such huge amounts.
HN told me OpenAI was on the verge of collapse.
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.
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
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.
Thiel said around last autumn that AI is a bubble and exited Nvidia. Nvidia is now falling despite good earnings.
If OpenAI keeps getting circular financing, of course they will not collapse yet.
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.
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.
Interesting. I’m having anything on Gemini being profitable though, do you happen to have a source?
Here's one, basically AI is driving 15% of Google's profits at the end of 2025.
https://advergroup.com/gemini-hits-650-million-users/
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.
https://www.qualia.com/qualia-clear/
Unlike OpenAI, Google has an actual business model, not just strange circular deals.
Edit: I misswrote "majority of" instead of 15% of Google's profits.
Yet Google is valued at a 10X multiple, Anthropic a 35X and OpenAI 100x revenue... Nothing abnormal about this at all, imagine think an extermely unprofitable autocomplete tool should be worth 100x revenue lmfao.
However, when youre entrenched with the military/gov like OpenAI (see discord/persona leaks) you're basically invinsible. Especially when that military is the reincarnation of Nazi Germany , and a fourth Reich (The USA).
OpenAI is another BS national security project larping as a private company, like facebook, like starlink ect ect. Hard to get congress to approve your mass surveillance programs so you get them funded through markets with fake entrepreneurs like Elon and Altman.
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.
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?
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.
Well, $110B a year doesn't last long if you are losing $40B a quarter.
Also Softbank invested, which is never a great signal.
Big number gets bigger
Source: https://openai.com/index/scaling-ai-for-everyone/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47180302)
I guess no GPT on Bedrock still it seems
They announced more OpenAI models coming to bedrock.
Taking the circular deals up another magnitude?