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What is the point - exactly - of profit? Profit is money you can't find a use for to grow your business, so you give some of it to the government in the form o
by nl 7mo ago
What is the point - exactly - of profit?
Profit is money you can't find a use for to grow your business, so you give some of it to the government in the form of tax.
Also there is a big difference between operational expenses and capital expenses like building data centers.
I think OpenAI is being very aggressive on the growth vs conservative financial management spectrum but just saying "only profit should matter" is just wrong.
- bandrami 7mo ago> What is the point - exactly - of profit? It's what attracts capital investment, which businesses need
- nl 7mo agoOpenAI seems to do reasonably well at attracting capital investment without profits. As did Amazon, Google, Meta etc etc.
- bandrami 7mo agoOpenAI is great at attracting people who say "yeah, sure, I'll give you capital at some point in the future" who then never actually give them the capital (or at least haven't yet).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- nl 7mo agoThey seem to be spending lot of cash too...
- ngold 7mo agoIf I remember correctly, Facebook took 10 years raising money before going ipo. Could be wrong though.
- troupo 7mo agoWhat's the point - exactly - of a company being sustainable?
- nl 7mo agoBeing profitable isn't the same as sustainable. Even a simple shop isn't profitable for months if it needs to buy stock up front, and run some ads to let people know about it. The money for that comes from the shop owners as an investment. This is the same thing but on a slightly bigger scale, over a longer time frame.
- troupo 7mo agoIf your shop is unprofitable for years with no chance to recoup any of the costs, you close it, as your investments run out, and investors and banks stop giving you money as you keep losing them. US tech companies just continue operating because "revenue and growth".
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- nl 7mo ago> US tech companies just continue operating because "revenue and growth". US tech companies are some of the most profitable business in history. Google made over $130B profit last year, Meta 60B. I'm old enough to have had exactly the same arguments (on Slashdot for Google, here for FB) for both before their IPOs. It's a uninformed argument and people should know better.