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

(www.nytimes.com)
387 points reaperducer | 2 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:03 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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. bigwheels ◴[31 Oct 25 16:13 UTC] No.45773718[source]▶
> this feels a little like the WeWork CEO flying couches to offices in private jets

Fascinating! I unearthed the TL;DR for anyone else interested:

* WeWork purchased a $60 million Gulfstream G650ER private jet for Neumann's use.

* The G650ER was customized with two bedrooms and a conference table.

* Neumann used the jet extensively for global travel, meetings, and family trips.

* The jet was also used to transport items like a "sizable chunk" of marijuana in a cereal box, which might be worse and more negligent than couches.

Sources:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/03/adam-neumann-re...

https://nypost.com/2021/07/17/the-shocking-ways-weworks-ex-c...

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2. guywithahat ◴[31 Oct 25 19:30 UTC] No.45775795[source]▶
The couch fascinate me the most because it's almost justifiable. Like offices need furniture and grand openings should be nice; however the cost could never be recovered and the company was way too big to be doing things that don't scale.

In a similar vein, LLM's/AI are clearly impressive technologies that can be done profitably. Spending billions on a model however may not be economically feasible. It's a great example of runaway spending, whereas the weed thing feels more along the lines of a drug problem to me.