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That argument supports any levels of losses, however I also think it’s rather misleading. Growth means some inefficiencies, but their expenses are largely arou

by Retric 4mo ago

That argument supports any levels of losses, however I also think it’s rather misleading. Growth means some inefficiencies, but their expenses are largely around commodities like electricity and data centers not a sudden army of salespeople. They also got 150M 11 years ago and 1 billion 7 year ago, they where quite large in 2022. Basically you don’t get better at writing checks to your local utility which limits how much they can control costs.

simonw 4mo ago
> They also got 150M 11 years ago and 1 billion 7 year ago, they where quite large in 2022. I had to look that up, you're talking about investment there, not earned revenue. The 150M was their initial funding (actually 130M I think https://www.clay.com/dossier/openai-funding https://www.clay.com/dossier/openai-funding) The 1B was from Microsoft in 2019: https://openai.com/index/microsoft-invests-in-and-partners-with-openai/ https://openai.com/index/microsoft-invests-in-and-partners-w... In 2022 they only had 335 employees (according to various internet searches but I can't find an original source for that number.) I can't find credible numbers for revenue from the GPT-3 API, which did have some usage - GitHub Copilot started charging a subscription fee on June 21, 2022 - https://github.blog/changelog/2022-06-21-github-copilot-is-now-available-to-individual-developers/ https://github.blog/changelog/2022-06-21-github-copilot-is-n... - and that was running on the OpenAI Codex model so presumably OpenAI had some revenue from that.
- Retric 4mo ago
  We don’t disagree with the underlying facts. That said, in many ways 335 employees is the midpoint between 3 employees and 30,000 employees. The CEO can’t keep track of everyone’s names and what they’re doing, you need layers of management, HR, etc. It’s not really a simple exponential function but 335 to 336 is way more automated than going from 3 to 4.

by Retric 4mo ago

simonw 4mo ago

> They also got 150M 11 years ago and 1 billion 7 year ago, they where quite large in 2022. I had to look that up, you're talking about investment there, not earned revenue. The 150M was their initial funding (actually 130M I think https://www.clay.com/dossier/openai-funding https://www.clay.com/dossier/openai-funding) The 1B was from Microsoft in 2019: https://openai.com/index/microsoft-invests-in-and-partners-with-openai/ https://openai.com/index/microsoft-invests-in-and-partners-w... In 2022 they only had 335 employees (according to various internet searches but I can't find an original source for that number.) I can't find credible numbers for revenue from the GPT-3 API, which did have some usage - GitHub Copilot started charging a subscription fee on June 21, 2022 - https://github.blog/changelog/2022-06-21-github-copilot-is-now-available-to-individual-developers/ https://github.blog/changelog/2022-06-21-github-copilot-is-n... - and that was running on the OpenAI Codex model so presumably OpenAI had some revenue from that.

Retric 4mo ago
We don’t disagree with the underlying facts. That said, in many ways 335 employees is the midpoint between 3 employees and 30,000 employees. The CEO can’t keep track of everyone’s names and what they’re doing, you need layers of management, HR, etc. It’s not really a simple exponential function but 335 to 336 is way more automated than going from 3 to 4.