zlacker

>>tedsan+(OP)
You have to keep in mind Microsoft is planning on spending almost 100B in datacenter capex this year and they're not alone. This is basically OpenAI matching the major cloud provider's spending.

This could also be (at least partly) a reaction to Microsoft threatening to pull OpenAI's cloud credits last year. OpenAI wants to maintain independence and with compute accounting for 25–50% of their expenses (currently) [2], this strategy may actually be prudent.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/03/microsoft-expects-to-spend-8...

[2] https://youtu.be/7EH0VjM3dTk?si=hZe0Og6BjqLxbVav&t=1077

>>serjes+ja
Microsoft has lots of revenue streams tied to that capex outlay. Does OpenAI have similar revenue numbers to Microsoft?

>>throit+Oa
OpenAI has a very healthy revenue stream in the form of other companies throwing money at them.

But to answer your question, no they aren’t even profitable by themselves.

>>tuvang+Uc
Given the release of the new DeepSeek R1 model [0], OpenAI’s future revenue stream is probably more at risk than it was a week ago.

[0] - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/china-is-catching-up-with...

>>MR4D+Jm
Not necessarily. DeepSeek will probably only threaten the API usage of OpenAI, which could also be banned in the US if it's too sucessful. API usage is not a main revenue for OpenAI (it is for Anthropic last time I checked). The main competitor for R1 is o1, which isn't gnerally available yet.

>>WiSaGa+oD
DeepSeek is an open source model. You can download it and run it locally on your laptop already.

So any OpenAI user ( or competitor even) could take it and run a hosted model. You can even tweak the weights if you wanted to.

Why pay for OpenAI access when you can just run your own and save the money?

>>MR4D+sW
The one your laptop can run does not rival what OpenAI offers for money. Still, the issue is not whether third party can run it, it's just the OpenAI seems not putting API as their main product.