So, how do their overall financials look these days?

They can probably raise more capital, and stave off the inevitable bankruptcy for just a bit longer. Wouldn't be surprised if US Gov buys a stake too.

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thg 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Will Locket wrote about it last month: https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/openai-is-in-a-far-wor...

tldr is: They either get a successful IPO to stave off bankruptcy for a couple more months, or they're going to be bankrupt by the beginning of next year.

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ralph84 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or they stay private and raise more capital. Until they have a failed round people predicting bankruptcy are getting way ahead of how this would actually play out. Some of us are old enough to remember the "Amazon can never make a profit and will go bankrupt" predictions of 25 years ago.

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thg 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The early years Amazon wasn't profitable by choice. They could have stopped that at any time and even did demonstrate it by having a single quarter with $1 profit or some such.

Anthropic and OpenAI have no choice but to go public if they want to avoid bankruptcy. Venture capital firms are struggling to raise more capital, the bond market is so saturated that the borrowing costs are getting too high and big tech is also at the limit of how much they can invest, all while AI companies' costs are going through the roof. Retail investors is the last market they haven't tapped into and to do that, they have to go public. There's just no way around it.

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IsTom 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The scale current of money-burning is just wild. I'm not sure you can compare it to anything else this century.

	▲	esseph 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The tech industry is currently spending more on AI infrastructure every single year than the United States spent during the absolute peak annual years of the post-9/11 wars. That said, $2T was spent during GWOT with another $8T in veteran care, DHS, interest in debt. Current AI spend this year is expected to be $2.59T (chips, infra, etc)

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jcfrei 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's a very low chance of OpenAI doing an IPO this year: https://polymarket.com/event/openai-ipo-by. So the assumption that they "have to do an IPO" already seems questionable. The rest of the analysis also feels pretty hand-wavy. I'm not saying OpenAI is in a strong financial position, but this article doesn't make a solid enough case for why it's supposedly in such dire straits.

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4ggr0 5 hours ago | parent [-]

are we genuinely using prediction gambling as sources now?

	▲	jcfrei 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you find a more informed and up-to-date source than a market where people wagered close to $1M on I'm all ears.

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xattt 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any particular preparations to do before this ship hits the sand?

	▲	rf15 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Extract as much liquidity as you can and don't have any commitments to them.

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JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"It means that OpenAI could soon rack up losses that exceed its asset value. In other words, they are on course to slam into bankruptcy this year."

...that's not how bankruptcy happens. What is this guy's background?

Assets on a balance sheet are held at book value. You can absolutely run GAAP losses that exceed net assets without running into bankruptcy, particularly if you're granting (and having employees exercise) options.

The critical measures are cash in and out and debt-like obligations. None of those metrics point to OpenAI going bankrupt this year unless they do something really fucking creative. (Which, to be clear, is Altman's M.O.)

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atwrk 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You're right of course, but in this case the statement doesn't look that false. The source article [0] states that half of the assets is cash, so "assets" is defined a bit more freely here.

If we assume a 2026 revenue of 23B (Q1 2026 revenue x4) and costs of 70B (2025 costs * (2026 revenue / 2025 revenue)), even those 25B in cash reserves won't mean much. And this napkin math even ignores their debt obligations. So either they raise money in the range of 50-75B this year (actual money, not datacenter vouchers), or ...

[0] https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

	▲	JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> costs of 70B (2025 costs (2026 revenue / 2025 revenue)), even those 25B in cash reserves won't mean much* If all those costs are cash costs, sure. When OpenAI gets non-cash investment, and it "burns" that investment on compute, that should be counted as a GAAP expense. Yet it doesn't touch cash. (It would destroy a unit of compute asset. But again, book versus market value can mess with how that works intuitively.) Similarly, if you're granting lots and lots of options they're going to generate lots and lots of compensation expenses (and thus losses) as they vest. These aren't cash expenses, however.