4 ms·

Idk, it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025. It's not insane numbers but it's not bad either. YouTube had those revenues in...2018. 12 years after lau

Idk, it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025. It's not insane numbers but it's not bad either. YouTube had those revenues in...2018. 12 years after launching. There's definitely a huge upside potential in openai. Of course they are burning money at crazy rates, but it's not that strange to see why investors are pouring money into it.

pizlonator 1y ago
> it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025 That's a lot of money to be getting from a subscription business and no ads for the free tier Not hard to see upside here
- scarface_74 1y ago
  It’s when they are losing four times as much. Are their marginal costs per subscriber even positive?
  - dabockster 1y ago
    Yeah, how much profit will they make if they're able to go for-profit? Revenue doesn't tell me anything.
wang_li 1y ago
didn't the post a loss of $5 billion last year and are on track for a loss of $8-9 billion this year?
- MaysonL 1y ago
  No: they’re on track to lose $30B or so (they lost 13.5B H1 2025)
  - saltyoldman 1y ago
    even if thats the case, they have eaten multiple times that amount of other companies lunch. Companies that currently use ads, whereas cgpt does not.(but will).
    - sumeno 1y ago
      Have they? GOOG is at record highs, FB is at record highs, MSFT is at record highs
      - godelski 1y ago
        As a reminder, even Apple didn't hit 1T market cap until late 2018. We didn't get a second in the 4 comma club until mid 2019 with MSFT. Google and Facebook in 2021. And now we have 4 companies above 3T and 11 in the 4 comma club. Back when the iPhone was released oil companies were at the top and they were barely hitting 500B. So yeah, I don't think anyone has really been displaced. Nvidia at up, Broadcom at 7, and TSMC at 9 indicate that displacement might occur, but that's also not the displacement people are talking about.
        rockercoaster 1y ago
        I don't entirely know what to make of a very-small number of companies' valuations going sky-high that fast (and a few completely without any apparent connection to the fundamentals or even the best-plausible-case mid-term future of those fundamentals, like Tesla) but I can't help but think it means something is extremely broken in the economy, and it's not going to end well. Maybe we all should have been a little more pro-actively freaked out when dividends went from standard to all-but extinct, and nobody in the investor class seemed to mind... like, it seems that the balance between "owning things that directly make money through productive activity" and "owning things that I expect to go up in value" has gotten completely out-of-wack in favor of the latter.
        godelski 1y ago
        My guess? Hype. All the companies at the top have a lot of hype. I don't think that explains everything, but I believe it is an important factor. I also think with tech we've really entered a Lemon Market. It is very difficult to tell the quality of products prior to purchase. This is even more true with the loss of physical retail. I actually really miss stores like Sharper Image. Not because I want to buy the over priced stuff, but because you would go into those stores and try things. I definitely think the economy has shifted and we can see it in our sector. The old deal used to be that we could make good products and good profits. But now "the customer" is not the person that buys the product, it is the shareholder. Shareholder profits should reflect what the market value of the product being sold to customers, but it doesn't have to. So if we're just trying to maximize profits then I think there is no surprise when these things start to diverge.
mossTechnician 1y ago
The insane numbers are the ones you find when you look at their promises, like reaching $125 billion in revenue by 2029 (which they predict will be the first year they are profitable) https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-does-not-expect-be-cash-flow-positive-until-2029-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-03-26/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...
- senordevnyc 1y ago
  How credible would you have found their claims in 2021 that by 2025 they’d be doing north of ten billion in revenue?
blibble 1y ago
> Idk, it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025. giving away dollar bills for a nickel each is not particularly impressive
- kevmo314 1y ago
  I would be pretty impressed by anyone who managed to do that nominally. Moving a dozen billion dollars alone seems not trivial to do.
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
    Blowing a giant hole in Hoover Dam while somebody pees in Lake Mead would also be impressive. It just won't stay impressive for very long. Even if the guy peeing is a world champion urinator named Sam.
  - blibble 1y ago
    turns losing money scales well you can even pay people to help you out, and that helps even more!
- epolanski 1y ago
  Okay, but do you see it so hard to consider the point of who thinks that they can 5/10/20x their current revenues without seeing similar ballooning in costs long term?
- fragmede 1y ago
  It is when no one knows they're dollar bills. Obviously, I take those dollar bills to the bank and make $0.95. Easy money. But how about when it's not a dollar bill, but a conversation with a robot? And that robot lies and kinda sucks? Why would anyone even pay nickles to see that show? Haven't they heard there's free porn on the Internet they can watch? Free! If people are getting $20 or even $200 / months's worth of something out of the robot that's kinda dumb and lies, to the tune of $4.5 B in 6 months, which works out to be $750 million/month, it seems our priors, that this robot is dumb and kinda sucks, maybe isn't quite that dumb, even if it does lie occasionally?
thinkingtoilet 1y ago
It's not hard to make 4.5B when you lose 13.5B. If you give me 18B, I would bet I could lose 13.5B no problem.
- simonw 1y ago
  It is hard though. Getting people to hand $4.5B to a company is difficult no matter how much money you are losing in the process. I mean sure, you can get there instantly if you say "click here to buy $100 for $50", but that's not what's happening here - at least not that blatantly.
  - hiq 1y ago
    I get what you're saying, and it's especially interesting if revenue grows faster than costs, but for private entities it's harder to tell what the actual dynamics are. We don't really have the breakdown of the revenues, do we?
deleted 1y ago
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raincole 1y ago
It's an insane number considering how little they monetize it. Free users are not even seeing ads rn and they already have 4.5B revenue. I think 100B by 2029 is a very conservative number.
- silisili 1y ago
  I'm in awe they are still allowing free users at all. And I'm one of them. The free tier is enough for me to use it as a helper at work, and I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier.
  - sdesol 1y ago
    > I'm in awe they are still allowing free users at all. I am not. > The free tier is enough for me to use it as a helper at work, and I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier. You are sort of proving the point that thid isn't crazy. They want to be the dealer of choice and they can afford to give you the hit now for free.
  - wodenokoto 1y ago
    It’s not that they are “allowing free user at all” they are expanding their free offerings. Last year I paid $20/month for ChatGPT. This year I haven’t paid anything though my usage has only increased.
  - hiq 1y ago
    > I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier. Why would you pay if you can use a competitor for free?
    - silisili 1y ago
      I've used them all, and they all have their place I guess. ChatGPT is far and away my favorite for quick questions you'd ask the genius coworker next to you. For me, nothing else even comes close wrt speed and accuracy. So for that, I'd gladly pay. Don't get me wrong, Claude is a marvel and Deepseek punches above its weight, but neither compare with stuff like 'write me a sql query that does these 30 things as efficiently as possible.'. ChatGPT will output an answer with explanations for each line by the time Claude inevitably times out...again.

pizlonator 1y ago

> it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025 That's a lot of money to be getting from a subscription business and no ads for the free tier Not hard to see upside here

scarface_74 1y ago
It’s when they are losing four times as much. Are their marginal costs per subscriber even positive?
- dabockster 1y ago
  Yeah, how much profit will they make if they're able to go for-profit? Revenue doesn't tell me anything.

wang_li 1y ago

didn't the post a loss of $5 billion last year and are on track for a loss of $8-9 billion this year?

MaysonL 1y ago
No: they’re on track to lose $30B or so (they lost 13.5B H1 2025)
- saltyoldman 1y ago
  even if thats the case, they have eaten multiple times that amount of other companies lunch. Companies that currently use ads, whereas cgpt does not.(but will).
  - sumeno 1y ago
    Have they? GOOG is at record highs, FB is at record highs, MSFT is at record highs
    - godelski 1y ago
      As a reminder, even Apple didn't hit 1T market cap until late 2018. We didn't get a second in the 4 comma club until mid 2019 with MSFT. Google and Facebook in 2021. And now we have 4 companies above 3T and 11 in the 4 comma club. Back when the iPhone was released oil companies were at the top and they were barely hitting 500B. So yeah, I don't think anyone has really been displaced. Nvidia at up, Broadcom at 7, and TSMC at 9 indicate that displacement might occur, but that's also not the displacement people are talking about.
      - rockercoaster 1y ago
        I don't entirely know what to make of a very-small number of companies' valuations going sky-high that fast (and a few completely without any apparent connection to the fundamentals or even the best-plausible-case mid-term future of those fundamentals, like Tesla) but I can't help but think it means something is extremely broken in the economy, and it's not going to end well. Maybe we all should have been a little more pro-actively freaked out when dividends went from standard to all-but extinct, and nobody in the investor class seemed to mind... like, it seems that the balance between "owning things that directly make money through productive activity" and "owning things that I expect to go up in value" has gotten completely out-of-wack in favor of the latter.
        godelski 1y ago
        My guess? Hype. All the companies at the top have a lot of hype. I don't think that explains everything, but I believe it is an important factor. I also think with tech we've really entered a Lemon Market. It is very difficult to tell the quality of products prior to purchase. This is even more true with the loss of physical retail. I actually really miss stores like Sharper Image. Not because I want to buy the over priced stuff, but because you would go into those stores and try things. I definitely think the economy has shifted and we can see it in our sector. The old deal used to be that we could make good products and good profits. But now "the customer" is not the person that buys the product, it is the shareholder. Shareholder profits should reflect what the market value of the product being sold to customers, but it doesn't have to. So if we're just trying to maximize profits then I think there is no surprise when these things start to diverge.

mossTechnician 1y ago

The insane numbers are the ones you find when you look at their promises, like reaching $125 billion in revenue by 2029 (which they predict will be the first year they are profitable) https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-does-not-expect-be-cash-flow-positive-until-2029-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-03-26/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/o...

senordevnyc 1y ago
How credible would you have found their claims in 2021 that by 2025 they’d be doing north of ten billion in revenue?

blibble 1y ago

> Idk, it's a company with 4.5B in revenues in H1 2025. giving away dollar bills for a nickel each is not particularly impressive

kevmo314 1y ago
I would be pretty impressed by anyone who managed to do that nominally. Moving a dozen billion dollars alone seems not trivial to do.
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  Blowing a giant hole in Hoover Dam while somebody pees in Lake Mead would also be impressive. It just won't stay impressive for very long. Even if the guy peeing is a world champion urinator named Sam.
- blibble 1y ago
  turns losing money scales well you can even pay people to help you out, and that helps even more!
epolanski 1y ago
Okay, but do you see it so hard to consider the point of who thinks that they can 5/10/20x their current revenues without seeing similar ballooning in costs long term?
fragmede 1y ago
It is when no one knows they're dollar bills. Obviously, I take those dollar bills to the bank and make $0.95. Easy money. But how about when it's not a dollar bill, but a conversation with a robot? And that robot lies and kinda sucks? Why would anyone even pay nickles to see that show? Haven't they heard there's free porn on the Internet they can watch? Free! If people are getting $20 or even $200 / months's worth of something out of the robot that's kinda dumb and lies, to the tune of $4.5 B in 6 months, which works out to be $750 million/month, it seems our priors, that this robot is dumb and kinda sucks, maybe isn't quite that dumb, even if it does lie occasionally?

thinkingtoilet 1y ago

It's not hard to make 4.5B when you lose 13.5B. If you give me 18B, I would bet I could lose 13.5B no problem.

simonw 1y ago
It is hard though. Getting people to hand $4.5B to a company is difficult no matter how much money you are losing in the process. I mean sure, you can get there instantly if you say "click here to buy $100 for $50", but that's not what's happening here - at least not that blatantly.
- hiq 1y ago
  I get what you're saying, and it's especially interesting if revenue grows faster than costs, but for private entities it's harder to tell what the actual dynamics are. We don't really have the breakdown of the revenues, do we?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

raincole 1y ago

It's an insane number considering how little they monetize it. Free users are not even seeing ads rn and they already have 4.5B revenue. I think 100B by 2029 is a very conservative number.

silisili 1y ago
I'm in awe they are still allowing free users at all. And I'm one of them. The free tier is enough for me to use it as a helper at work, and I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier.
- sdesol 1y ago
  > I'm in awe they are still allowing free users at all. I am not. > The free tier is enough for me to use it as a helper at work, and I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier. You are sort of proving the point that thid isn't crazy. They want to be the dealer of choice and they can afford to give you the hit now for free.
- wodenokoto 1y ago
  It’s not that they are “allowing free user at all” they are expanding their free offerings. Last year I paid $20/month for ChatGPT. This year I haven’t paid anything though my usage has only increased.
- hiq 1y ago
  > I'd probably pay for it tomorrow if they cut off the free tier. Why would you pay if you can use a competitor for free?
  - silisili 1y ago
    I've used them all, and they all have their place I guess. ChatGPT is far and away my favorite for quick questions you'd ask the genius coworker next to you. For me, nothing else even comes close wrt speed and accuracy. So for that, I'd gladly pay. Don't get me wrong, Claude is a marvel and Deepseek punches above its weight, but neither compare with stuff like 'write me a sql query that does these 30 things as efficiently as possible.'. ChatGPT will output an answer with explanations for each line by the time Claude inevitably times out...again.