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OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion (www.wheresyoured.at)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1198508/openai-losses-increased-nearly-8x-in-2025-with-spending-hitting-34-billion

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[–] 17 points 3 months ago (7 children)

What does a CFO actually do in these situations, how do they balance a book that is creating its own black hole?

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    That's quite easy, the books are balanced, there are just more debits than credits. "Balancing the books" doesn't mean that the net result is zero, it means that all the money going in and going out is accounted for.

    OpenAI can keep bleeding money as long as there are fools willing to fund it in exchange for the illusion of future profits.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    You can't have balanced books where there are more debits than credits. That would be out of balance.

    Balanced means debits = credits.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    I'm not an accountant, but you can certainly balance books while showing a loss. Double-entry bookkeeping simply means that every transaction has two parts, and "balancing" simply means that all the transactions cancel out properly.

    I joke with my accountant friends that their entire job is counting to zero.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    A loss is not an imbalance of debits and credits, but how much of those debits end up in expenses and the credits end up in revenue.

    DR Expense $1,000
CR Cash $1,000

    With no other activity in a period, that is a $1,000 loss funded by cash.

    DR Expense $1,000
CR Loan $1,000

    Is a loss funded by borrowings.

    DR Sales Discounts $1,000
CR Sales Revenue $1,000

    Is 0 profit/expense as the sale was marked down to 0 (assuming no cost of sales).

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Exactly. My terminology might not be correct, but my point is that their books can be perfectly balanced, and they can also be losing a shit-ton of money, as long as investors keep shoveling money in.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago

    OpenAI still has $50 billion, about half of that in cash, because they keep fund raising. The game is keep extending the runway until early investors can cash out and leave someone else holding the bag.

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