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How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise

(www.nytimes.com)
387 points reaperducer | 6 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.727s | source | bottom
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nova22033 ◴[31 Oct 25 14:59 UTC] No.45772702[source]▶
Related

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/microsoft_earnings_q1...

Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter

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guywithahat ◴[31 Oct 25 15:07 UTC] No.45772839[source]▶
It's incredible how Tesla used to lose a few hundred million a year and analysis shows would freak out claiming they'd never be profitable. Now Rivian can lose 5 billion a year and I don't hear anything about it, and OpenAI can lose 11 billion in a quarter and Microsoft still backs them.

I do think this is going to be a deeply profitable industry, but this feels a little like the WeWork CEO flying couches to offices in private jets

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1. lokar ◴[31 Oct 25 15:40 UTC] No.45773301[source]▶
Very few industries are “deeply profitable” absent the illegal abuse of monopoly power
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2. potato3732842 ◴[31 Oct 25 15:48 UTC] No.45773414[source]▶
Don't forget the perfectly legal use of legislation and bureaucratic precedent that gives them "soft/lossy monopoly" power or all but forces people do to business with them.
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3. Iulioh ◴[31 Oct 25 15:53 UTC] No.45773483[source]▶
And as we saw, once a model is trained you need very little compute to run it and there is very little advantage in begin the 1st model and the 10th model.

Monopoly in this field is impossible, your product won't ever be so good that the competition does not make sense

Add to this that AGI is impossible with LLMs...

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4. lokar ◴[31 Oct 25 15:53 UTC] No.45773486[source]▶
OpenAI is pretty clearly pushing for complex government regulation as a way to protect their lead and prevent new entrants in the market.
5. lokar ◴[31 Oct 25 16:20 UTC] No.45773791[source]▶
I’m not so sure. Look for more gov regulations that make it hard for startups. Look for stricter enforcement of copyright (or even updates to laws) once the big players have secured licensing deals, to cut off the supply of cheap training data.
6. sph ◴[01 Nov 25 13:04 UTC] No.45781333[source]▶
True, yet all ills are blamed on the so-called "free market". There is nothing free about our economy, it's manipulation and lobbying all the way down.