They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that “smart people with spreadsheets won’t let them lose money” is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.
They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.
Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you’re right. You’re just right for the wrong reason.
Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.
The more people actively using these tools, even if they’re just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the “active users” metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies “make thier money”.
Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.
Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.
For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.
If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.
Despite the popular fantasy, the rich and powerful are not stupid.
Uh… famously untrue. Mental illness has plagued monarchs, pharaohs, and caesers for millennia. That’s long before you get to all the quirked up white boys and trad rad girl bosses currently running things.
You don’t know more about a company or market from passively consuming headlines than the leadership of that company.
Okay, but you can review their balance sheets and their primary lines of credit. Case in point, Sam Altman is heavily reliant on three big financial partners - Softbank, Oracle, and NVIDIA. Two of these are - themselves - hemorrhaging money thanks to large capital outlays that have failed to produce substantive returns.
There are finance journalists who get out ahead of this and report their own analysis. And you can find that in a thousand different private journals, substacks, and podcasts. But you can also go do the grunt work yourself if you’re ambitious.
OpenAI’s financials have been disclosed already (although the official SEC filing is still upcoming). So… just read them if you doubt what you’re reading in the news. But it’s not some kind of secret that the business is operating at a loss, with a fixation on debt-fueled growth. The argument is over future projected revenue, which isn’t something business leadership can be any more certain of than a passive media consumer.
I definitely get the knee-jerk impulse to announce “business professionals know more about business than internet idiots”. Because, sure. True. But the idea that business professionals don’t routinely make bad decisions has some pretty historic well-established counterpoints.
“The business people know more” line is akin to saying “This used car dealer must know more about the vehicles on his lot than I do, so I can trust him”.
Regardless, it should be fairly obvious that giving a company you hate money will not cause them to fail faster.
I’ll concede that trying to soak Altman for $14k/mo when he’s already hemorrhaging billions is a bit like pissing in the river.
I might ask what you plan to do with the $14k in tokens you’re burning. If you’ve got a material use case for them, and Altman wants to sell you $20 for a nickel, go wild.
But half the joke of AI is that you’re burning tokens to do nothing. That’s why businesses recoil as soon as they’re asked to justify at-cost AI spend.
The leaders of the companies are not stupid. If they started seeing a net loss from their sales strategy, they’d change strategies.
Unless money is not the goal. Not the sole goal at least. As you said, they’re not stupid. It’s entirely within reason to assume they may be aiming for more than just money.
Who knows what they’re planning. Nothing good for us - that’s for sure.
deleted by creator
Counterpoint:
They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that “smart people with spreadsheets won’t let them lose money” is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.
They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.
Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you’re right. You’re just right for the wrong reason.
Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.
The more people actively using these tools, even if they’re just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the “active users” metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies “make thier money”.
deleted by creator
Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.
Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.
For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.
If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.
Uh… famously untrue. Mental illness has plagued monarchs, pharaohs, and caesers for millennia. That’s long before you get to all the quirked up white boys and trad rad girl bosses currently running things.
Okay, but you can review their balance sheets and their primary lines of credit. Case in point, Sam Altman is heavily reliant on three big financial partners - Softbank, Oracle, and NVIDIA. Two of these are - themselves - hemorrhaging money thanks to large capital outlays that have failed to produce substantive returns.
There are finance journalists who get out ahead of this and report their own analysis. And you can find that in a thousand different private journals, substacks, and podcasts. But you can also go do the grunt work yourself if you’re ambitious.
OpenAI’s financials have been disclosed already (although the official SEC filing is still upcoming). So… just read them if you doubt what you’re reading in the news. But it’s not some kind of secret that the business is operating at a loss, with a fixation on debt-fueled growth. The argument is over future projected revenue, which isn’t something business leadership can be any more certain of than a passive media consumer.
I definitely get the knee-jerk impulse to announce “business professionals know more about business than internet idiots”. Because, sure. True. But the idea that business professionals don’t routinely make bad decisions has some pretty historic well-established counterpoints.
“The business people know more” line is akin to saying “This used car dealer must know more about the vehicles on his lot than I do, so I can trust him”.
deleted by creator
I’ll concede that trying to soak Altman for $14k/mo when he’s already hemorrhaging billions is a bit like pissing in the river.
I might ask what you plan to do with the $14k in tokens you’re burning. If you’ve got a material use case for them, and Altman wants to sell you $20 for a nickel, go wild.
But half the joke of AI is that you’re burning tokens to do nothing. That’s why businesses recoil as soon as they’re asked to justify at-cost AI spend.
The only way to stop them is give them more money.
Hubris is what the rich and powerful suffer from, not stupidity. And hubris makes the same blind decisions as stupidity.
Right on point
Unless money is not the goal. Not the sole goal at least. As you said, they’re not stupid. It’s entirely within reason to assume they may be aiming for more than just money.
Who knows what they’re planning. Nothing good for us - that’s for sure.