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OpenAI's annualized revenue hits $10 billion, up from $5.5 billion in December 2024

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  • Can someone tell me if this is bad, good or normal?

    They love pointing out their revenue instead of their profit. It they were truly making money, you’d think they’d refer to their profit instead.

  • Can someone tell me if this is bad, good or normal?

    It's...weird? Not normal, anyway.

    Usually $10 billion worth of revenue has obvious products, services and outcomes it to point to.

    $10 billion is a difficult to understand amount of money, and unusual for a relatively new software as a service company.

    • The first iPhone release completely transformed society within a few years...and earned about 1/10th that much revenue (6 million units at $700.00, if I've got my sums right). (Although I imagine Apple makes much more from the app store, than the devices.)

    • $10 billion is about 1/4 of the annual revenue of SalesForce, one of the most successful software as a service companies. SalesForce generates sales, which companies tend to be quite happy to pay for, of course.

    So OpenAI doubling in revenue and hitting those kinds of numbers this soon is, odd. Unexpected.

    To speculate a bit, it may be the kind of fortune enjoyed by folks who sold mining equipment to gold diggers during the gold rush.

    There is presumably lots of speculative investment money flowing to companies that are promising big rewards from novel applications of the OpenAI technology. Of course they have to purchase the technology today, to deliver the huge novel profits next year...

    I base this speculation the observation that there's usually sizeable amounts of money chasing hot new technologies.

  • It's...weird? Not normal, anyway.

    Usually $10 billion worth of revenue has obvious products, services and outcomes it to point to.

    $10 billion is a difficult to understand amount of money, and unusual for a relatively new software as a service company.

    • The first iPhone release completely transformed society within a few years...and earned about 1/10th that much revenue (6 million units at $700.00, if I've got my sums right). (Although I imagine Apple makes much more from the app store, than the devices.)

    • $10 billion is about 1/4 of the annual revenue of SalesForce, one of the most successful software as a service companies. SalesForce generates sales, which companies tend to be quite happy to pay for, of course.

    So OpenAI doubling in revenue and hitting those kinds of numbers this soon is, odd. Unexpected.

    To speculate a bit, it may be the kind of fortune enjoyed by folks who sold mining equipment to gold diggers during the gold rush.

    There is presumably lots of speculative investment money flowing to companies that are promising big rewards from novel applications of the OpenAI technology. Of course they have to purchase the technology today, to deliver the huge novel profits next year...

    I base this speculation the observation that there's usually sizeable amounts of money chasing hot new technologies.

    Do you think OpenAI could be falsifying data, laundering money, or is it just that investors are hyped about AI?

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    They're giving OpenAI more leverage to have a strong IPO in the future.

  • It's...weird? Not normal, anyway.

    Usually $10 billion worth of revenue has obvious products, services and outcomes it to point to.

    $10 billion is a difficult to understand amount of money, and unusual for a relatively new software as a service company.

    • The first iPhone release completely transformed society within a few years...and earned about 1/10th that much revenue (6 million units at $700.00, if I've got my sums right). (Although I imagine Apple makes much more from the app store, than the devices.)

    • $10 billion is about 1/4 of the annual revenue of SalesForce, one of the most successful software as a service companies. SalesForce generates sales, which companies tend to be quite happy to pay for, of course.

    So OpenAI doubling in revenue and hitting those kinds of numbers this soon is, odd. Unexpected.

    To speculate a bit, it may be the kind of fortune enjoyed by folks who sold mining equipment to gold diggers during the gold rush.

    There is presumably lots of speculative investment money flowing to companies that are promising big rewards from novel applications of the OpenAI technology. Of course they have to purchase the technology today, to deliver the huge novel profits next year...

    I base this speculation the observation that there's usually sizeable amounts of money chasing hot new technologies.

    Thats less than 50 million GPT plus subscriptions, even fewer if you factor in the more expensive subscriptions. Thats alot of subscriptions, but not an implausible number.

  • Thats less than 50 million GPT plus subscriptions, even fewer if you factor in the more expensive subscriptions. Thats alot of subscriptions, but not an implausible number.

    Good point.

    That would put OpenAI around #5 on this list (by estimated subscriber count): https://largest.org/technology/largest-saas-businesses-by-number-of-subscribers/

    Less than Microsoft, Google, SalesForce and Zoom - but higher than Slack, DropBox, and Adobe Creative Cloud.

    It's surprising and rare for a relatively new company to jump that high in user base this quick.

    It's surprising, but it's plausible. OpenAI and derived products do anecdotally seem about that popular, this year.

  • Do you think OpenAI could be falsifying data, laundering money, or is it just that investors are hyped about AI?

    I assume that any venture backed company riding the crest of a hype wave is doing all three of those things, (because many past venture backed companies riding the crest of a hype wave have turned out to be doing all three of those things.)

    There are more con-artists at an average technology investment conference, than there are free vendor labeled give-away USB drives.

    But OpenAI is still a real tool, and actually does some interesting stuff. (Contrasted with many past venture investment hype waves that were 100% pure bullshit, such as various "risk free" finance products, and some "no one asked for this" BlockChain apps.)

    That said - as others in this thread have pointed out - while the revenue quote is a surprising number, it's not completely implausible, by any means. I personally know plenty of people who find an AI product subscription worth a few dollars each month.

  • Good point.

    That would put OpenAI around #5 on this list (by estimated subscriber count): https://largest.org/technology/largest-saas-businesses-by-number-of-subscribers/

    Less than Microsoft, Google, SalesForce and Zoom - but higher than Slack, DropBox, and Adobe Creative Cloud.

    It's surprising and rare for a relatively new company to jump that high in user base this quick.

    It's surprising, but it's plausible. OpenAI and derived products do anecdotally seem about that popular, this year.

    OpenAI reminds me in some ways of Netscape, except that it hasn't gone public yet, compared to the latter, which did so only 16 months after its founding.

  • They love pointing out their revenue instead of their profit. It they were truly making money, you’d think they’d refer to their profit instead.

    Revenue is a standard unit of measurement for any venture backed business because it gauges interest and growth better than profit does

  • I assume that any venture backed company riding the crest of a hype wave is doing all three of those things, (because many past venture backed companies riding the crest of a hype wave have turned out to be doing all three of those things.)

    There are more con-artists at an average technology investment conference, than there are free vendor labeled give-away USB drives.

    But OpenAI is still a real tool, and actually does some interesting stuff. (Contrasted with many past venture investment hype waves that were 100% pure bullshit, such as various "risk free" finance products, and some "no one asked for this" BlockChain apps.)

    That said - as others in this thread have pointed out - while the revenue quote is a surprising number, it's not completely implausible, by any means. I personally know plenty of people who find an AI product subscription worth a few dollars each month.

    Well, it's surprising that OpenAI has that kind of revenue, considering that software companies in that nonprofit sector can't achieve that kind of revenue. If we talk about other sectors like journalism, like the Associated Press, they can achieve that kind of revenue.

    I agree that in technology, there are many scammers, but most fail and don't make an impact. But then there are others who manage to continue and make an impact, like Builder.ai or Theranos. Then there are exceptional cases that do make a big impact, like Enron or WorldCom.

    Well, we'll have to see how their income evolves next year, as well as what their plan will be to transition from a non-profit to a PBC.

  • Thats less than 50 million GPT plus subscriptions, even fewer if you factor in the more expensive subscriptions. Thats alot of subscriptions, but not an implausible number.

    They also have an API, I think a chunk of that revenue comes from there. Think 3rd party apps and services having chat bots, writing assistants, etc that use openai's API.

  • It's...weird? Not normal, anyway.

    Usually $10 billion worth of revenue has obvious products, services and outcomes it to point to.

    $10 billion is a difficult to understand amount of money, and unusual for a relatively new software as a service company.

    • The first iPhone release completely transformed society within a few years...and earned about 1/10th that much revenue (6 million units at $700.00, if I've got my sums right). (Although I imagine Apple makes much more from the app store, than the devices.)

    • $10 billion is about 1/4 of the annual revenue of SalesForce, one of the most successful software as a service companies. SalesForce generates sales, which companies tend to be quite happy to pay for, of course.

    So OpenAI doubling in revenue and hitting those kinds of numbers this soon is, odd. Unexpected.

    To speculate a bit, it may be the kind of fortune enjoyed by folks who sold mining equipment to gold diggers during the gold rush.

    There is presumably lots of speculative investment money flowing to companies that are promising big rewards from novel applications of the OpenAI technology. Of course they have to purchase the technology today, to deliver the huge novel profits next year...

    I base this speculation the observation that there's usually sizeable amounts of money chasing hot new technologies.

    6 million units at $700 a pop is $4.2 billion in revenue. Much closer to 1/2 of $10 billion than 1/10.

    Apple has never made more money from the App Store than from iPhone hardware sales. When the iPhone launched the App Store didn’t exist yet. Over time, Apple’s revenue from services (including the App Store) has grown dramatically to around $26 billion per quarter today, though that is still less than what they earn in iPhone sales (a bit over $50 billion per quarter in 2024).

  • Good point.

    That would put OpenAI around #5 on this list (by estimated subscriber count): https://largest.org/technology/largest-saas-businesses-by-number-of-subscribers/

    Less than Microsoft, Google, SalesForce and Zoom - but higher than Slack, DropBox, and Adobe Creative Cloud.

    It's surprising and rare for a relatively new company to jump that high in user base this quick.

    It's surprising, but it's plausible. OpenAI and derived products do anecdotally seem about that popular, this year.

    That’s a strange list. OpenAI doesn’t only offer SaaS for end users, it also offers API access which puts it into the infrastructure game with the likes of Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure (which actually offers OpenAI services and pushes them out to Windows users en masse).

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    And now the expenses…?

    🦗🦗🦗

  • And now the expenses…?

    🦗🦗🦗

    $5B loss last year.

  • Revenue is a standard unit of measurement for any venture backed business because it gauges interest and growth better than profit does

    Does that run the risk of leading to a future collapse of certain businesses, especially if their expenses remain consistently astronomical like OpenAI? Please note I don’t actually know—not trying to be cheeky with this question. Genuinely curious.

  • 948 Stimmen
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    L
    Yeah this thread ended up being more hostile to regular Americans than I intended but US culture and US global hegemony are the things that attract and amplify the shitty people from around the world. USA is the final boss of capitalist imperialism and the people have completely lost control over the reins. It's now a matter of when they actually say enough is enough, be it now or after Fascism runs its course and hurts millions of others around the world as well.
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    cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zoneC
    society would be so much more advanced if the uk stopped electing conservatives
  • EV tax credits might end even sooner than House bill proposed

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    sommerset@thelemmy.clubS
    Which big companies lose money? Frontier or other companies? People switch where? To frontier or away from frontier? Who has faster internet? Frontier or frontier competitors? What does it matter that there are leftists and centrists in the state? How does this have anything to do with the comment u writing about?
  • 295 Stimmen
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    kittyjynx@lemmy.worldK
    Just drink some Popov grade Trump Vodka at one of his many totally not bankrupt casinos to take your mind off of it.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
  • AI could already be conscious. Are we ready for it?

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    AI isn't math formulas though. AI is a complex dynamic system reacting to external input. There is no fundamental difference here to a human brain in that regard imo. It's just that the processing isn't happening in biological tissue but in silicon. Is it way less complex than a human? Sure. Is there a fundamental qualitative difference? I don't think so. What's the qualitative difference in your opinion?
  • San Francisco crypto founder faked his own death

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    My head canon is that Satoshi Nakamoto... ... is Hideo Kojima. Anyway, Satoshi is the pseudonym used on the original... white paper, design doc, whatever it was, for Bitcoin. There's no doubt about that, I was there back before even Mt. Gox became a bitcoin exchange, on the forums discussing it. I thought it was a neat idea, at the time... and then I realized 95% of the discussions on that forum were about 'the ethics of fully informed ponzi schemes' and such, very little devoted to actual technical development... realized this was probably a bad omen.