OpenAI’s IPO story is going to be interesting.
Q1 2026: $5.7B revenue $3.7B cash burn $9.3B operating loss $665B in compute commitments through 2030
AI demand is obviously real. But the business model is still: burn insane amounts of money to buy enough compute to stay frontier. The comparison with Anthropic will be tough.
Positive users see OpenAI's strategy as a winning bet on future powerful models, while negative users view the heavy losses as unsustainable with open source competitors poised to overtake them.
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https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-burned-3-7-billion-first-three-months-2026?rc=bfliih
OpenAI’s IPO story is going to be interesting.
Q1 2026: $5.7B revenue $3.7B cash burn $9.3B operating loss $665B in compute commitments through 2030
AI demand is obviously real. But the business model is still: burn insane amounts of money to buy enough compute to stay frontier. The comparison with Anthropic will be tough.
@vishalsingh2972 GLM-5.2 was such a big release yesterday!
@kimmonismus not at all sustainable, open source or get open sourced...chinese open models are coming for them 🚀
@kimmonismus I'm very confused about what their strategy is tbh. Back when they had the first mover advantage the approach of spreading out and trying to capture everything might have made sense, but right now they're just losing on all fronts it seems
@kimmonismus why do you think claude are surpassing openai in growth? I tried claude code for fable when it came out but even when i was using a older llm like opus 4.7 my limit would hit way faster than codex.
@kimmonismus At some point they will achieve such powerful models that they will print money in 100 different ways
@kimmonismus yup beat everyone but fable, even that will get beaten by end of year by a OS model 🥳
@kimmonismus not to mention they also limit their models on the chat interface, whereas i’m with 5.5 speaking to it without being conservative of my prompts.
@kimmonismus 2024: $2.37 operating loss for every $1 of revenue.
2025: Significant efficiency improvement, dropping to a $1.60 loss per $1 of revenue.
Q1 2026: The positive trend stalled and slightly reversed, ticking up to a $1.63 loss per $1 of revenue.
@kimmonismus Profit is not the focus for these companies yet.
Investors have made liquidity available.
Its all about scale fast now and make money later.
@alexgusevski maybe, but the question is: when. Since the competition is heating up and many IPOs in sight
@10xerik @kimmonismus As of now they win on the front that their largest competitor's frontier model is embargoed. If it stays that way for say, a month... then they could retake the lead. Personally don't find 5.5 that much fun though
@kimmonismus OpenAI strategy is the one for winners 🏆, thats how they can leverage venture capital while they still can to boost revenues in the near future
