Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and SoftBank (SFTBY) are near throwing some huge cash right into a furnace, that’s, OpenAI.
The primary part of the corporate’s newest funding spherical is sort of full, and if the businesses make investments close to the very best ranges of what has been hashed out, the full funding might be near $100 billion, based on Bloomberg.
Amazon is predicted to take a position as much as $50 billion, SoftBank as a lot as $30 billion, and Nvidia $20 billion, based on Bloomberg, however Reuters reviews that Nvidia will make investments $30 billion.
Why am I evaluating OpenAI with a money-burning furnace? Nicely, fairly merely, it isn’t worthwhile, and it has no clear path to profitability, solely ridiculous spending plans.
To grasp why this funding is like lighting cash on hearth, we want to try OpenAI after which study particular issues with every of the investing firms.
Near $100 billion might be spent on conserving the AI bubble going.
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OpenAI’s spending plans make no sense
Let’s start by defining ridiculous spending plans.
“We expect to end this year above $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate and grow to hundreds of billion by 2030,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altmanposted on X (formerly Twitter) in November 2025. “We are looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion over the next 8 years.”
Tomasz Tunguz, basic accomplice at Concept Ventures, did the mathematics relating to this plan. He began with a premise that OpenAI has dedicated to spending $1.15 trillion on {hardware} & cloud infrastructure between 2025 & 2035, as a result of the data Altman posted wasn’t obtainable but. So we all know that Altman has dedicated to spending more cash in much less time. Preserve that in thoughts.
Tunguz’s calculation steered that OpenAI would want to develop from roughly $10 billion in 2024 income to $577 billion by 2029. That is roughly the scale of Google’s income in the identical 12 months, he factors out, and that is all with a extra optimistic timeframe and fewer complete spending.
Inner OpenAI forecasts predict the for-profit a part of the corporate will hit $100 billion in annual revenues in 2029, based on The Info, as reported by Yahoo Finance.
An immense distinction exists between what OpenAI might be making and the way a lot it’ll want. You’d need to consider in unicorns to assume OpenAI will obtain its $1.4 trillion spending. It is apparent the corporate will face renegotiation of present infrastructure contracts.
OpenAI doesn’t have a path to profitability
How lengthy would it not be affordable to attend for the corporate to develop into worthwhile? OpenAI was based in 2015, and HSBC World Funding Analysis initiatives that OpenAI nonetheless received’t be worthwhile by 2030, based on Fortune.
Is 15 years of unprofitability sound enterprise? Together with plans to spend $1.4 trillion? I don’t assume so.
The corporate has just lately made a U-turn on its plans to maintain ChatGPT ad-free. This reveals that the subscription-based mannequin isn’t rising quick sufficient.
There’s a enormous downside with the brand new change. Customers of companies that additionally serve adverts usually tolerate them as a result of they anticipate a sure degree of high quality and reliability that will get them “hooked” on the service.
OpenAI had an ace up its sleeve with ChatGPT 4o, because it made the mannequin very sycophantic. When the mannequin launched, Altman’s very brief submit on X merely stated, “her.” He appeared to indicate that 4o was constructed to foster relationships just like the AI within the film “Her.”
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Sadly for OpenAI, its sycophantic AI mannequin prompted a collection of lawsuits. The latest one, filed in January, was from a university pupil alleging that ChatGPT “convinced him that he was an oracle” and “pushed him into psychosis,” as reported by Ars Technica.
The corporate shut down the mannequin on February 13.
This implies the corporate not has a mannequin on which individuals would tolerate seeing adverts. In the meantime, its competitor, Perplexity, is scrapping plans to place adverts in its AI search product, to keep away from scary folks’s distrust, reported Wired.
One other OpenAI competitor, Anthropic, just lately spent hundreds of thousands to mock OpenAI’s plan to introduce adverts, as reported by Reuters.
Even when the introduction of adverts to ChatGPT doesn’t end in customers migrating to different LLMs, that doesn’t imply adverts will out of the blue flip OpenAI right into a worthwhile firm. “A path to generating several billion dollars in ad revenue in 2026, going to $25B+ by 2030, seems reasonable,” stated Evercore ISI’s analyst Mark Mahaney, as Enterprise Insider reported.
That $25 billion quantity would certainly be spectacular if OpenAI didn’t have to spend a lot on infrastructure and on coaching its AI fashions, and if it didn’t have opponents in any respect.
To grasp how futile all that is, we want to consider revenue margins. As AI critic Ed Zitron rightly factors out in his weblog, AI firms don’t issue AI coaching into their margins, which, as he writes, “is inherently deceptive.”
There isn’t sufficient knowledge obtainable for OpenAI, however Zitron did the mathematics utilizing knowledge from Anthropic.
Anthropic’s 2025 gross margins had been 40%, based on Zitron, however as soon as he added the price of coaching, the margins sharply dropped to a unfavorable 53%. That is the true price ticket for LLMs.
OpenAI’s margins are most likely in the identical unfavorable ballpark. It’s because LLMs have to be consistently patched for each potential immediate that might transform malicious or might result in harmful “hallucinations.”
Fashions principally need to be educated till the tip of time, since an infinite variety of prompts might break them. It additionally means a consistently rising energy invoice.
The worst half could also be that giant language fashions have peaked, and in my view, they don’t even work that properly.
The overwhelming majority of 6000 executives see no impression from AI
The Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis just lately did a survey on nearly 6000 CFOs, CEOs, and executives from firms throughout the U.S., U.Ok., Germany, and Australia.
Here’s what researchers discovered.
“On average, more than 90% of business managers across the four countries estimate no impact of AI on their employment over the past three years. 89% report no impact of AI on their labor productivity (measured as volume of sales per employee) over the last three years.”
Want extra proof?
Middle for AI Security and Scale AI launched a paper “Remote Labor Index: Measuring AI Automation of Remote Work,” in October 2025, displaying some attention-grabbing stats.
They used what they name a Distant Labor Index (RLI), a multi-sector benchmark comprising real-world, economically priceless remote-work initiatives.
They up to date the outcomes because the paper’s launch, and based on the newest numbers, the best-performing mannequin is Anthropic’s Opusa 4.5, which achieved an automation charge of solely 3.75%.
“This demonstrates that contemporary AI systems fail to complete the vast majority of projects at a quality level that would be accepted as commissioned work,” the researchers write.
This is how AI methods’ automation charges stack up
Mannequin
Automation charge %
Opus 4.5
3.75
GPT-5.2
2.50
Manus 1.5
2.50
Grok 4
2.08
Sonnet 4.5
2.08
GPT-5
1.67
Gemini 3 Professional
1.25
Gemini 2.5 Professional
0.83
For those who want convincing that the fashions have peaked, learn Futurism’s article, “Scientists Are Getting Seriously Worried That We’ve Already Hit Peak AI.”
There may be one factor LLMs excel at, and I’ll admit that. They improve cybersecurity dangers. Morgan Stanley agrees, and I wrote about that in my article “Morgan Stanley flags $45B hidden cybersecurity opportunity.”
And now, we want to try the buyers themselves.
The AI bubble should continue to grow
Amazon is investing in OpenAI, but additionally it is investing in its competitor, Anthropic. As well as, Amazon is engaged on its AI fashions.
How does investing in two unprofitable firms, whereas making a competing product, make sense? One of the best half is that Amazon must elevate debt this 12 months if it actually desires to perform its spending plans. I’ve defined this in my article “Bank of America resets Amazon stock price target after earnings.”
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After my article posted, a Citi analyst additionally did the mathematics and got here to the identical conclusion. Learn the article “5-star analyst flags sharp contrast between Amazon, Google stock” by TheStreet’s Moz Farooque to discover the difficulty in additional depth.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman stated the corporate is pursuing “true self-sufficiency” in AI by constructing its personal highly effective fashions and lowering its reliance on OpenAI, the Monetary Occasions reported. Once more, how does investing in an unprofitable competitor firm make sense?
I coated Nvidia’s and Microsoft’s plans to put money into Anthropic in my article “Nvidia, Microsoft deal takes ‘circular’ financing to entirely new level.” So Nvidia’s state of affairs is just about the identical: investing in two unprofitable firms, and in addition making the identical product opponents are making.
For the uninitiated, Nvidia gives a line of Nemotron open fashions aimed toward organizations that need sovereign AI.
SoftBank is the one entity right here with out a battle of curiosity, nevertheless it’s extra like a gambler who positioned a very dangerous guess and is now placing much more cash in, hoping issues will flip round.
The loopy half is that the corporate offered its Nvidia shares to finish the 2025 investments in OpenAI. SoftBank’s money and money equivalents at December 31, 2025, had been ¥11.5 billion ($74.1 million), based on its Q3 earnings report.
After promoting Nvidia, I wouldn’t be shocked if the corporate now offered its Intel stake to fund this “great” alternative.
You is perhaps asking: Why are these firms investing if it isn’t good?
It is truly fairly easy. If they do not want to take a position, different buyers will get spooked, and OpenAI runs out of cash.
If OpenAI goes bust, the magical $1.4 trillion will get erased from AMZN, MSFT, NVDA, ORCL, AMD, AVGO, and CRWV backlogs. That’s nearly a complete wipeout, and Anthropic’s subsequent founding spherical additionally received’t occur after the OpenAI failure, because the panic might be unstoppable.
This could erase no matter cash they’ve of their backlogs from Anthropic, and out of the blue income projections don’t look that flattering, and the chain response continues.
Plugging the opening within the AI bubble is a horrible transfer, because the longer the bubble persists, the larger the implications for the economic system as soon as it bursts.
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