"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.