HN told me OpenAI was on the verge of collapse.
I'm sure that $50b has my money in there somewhere.
Bad comments about OpenAI's long-term viability I've seen plenty here. But that's not the same as the people predicting one of the hottest companies right now will somehow suddenly run out of cash all on its own
The fact it's become a household name internationally (giving it the appearance of success) can't save it from spending dramatically more money than it makes. It's been coasting on investments, but it's not even close to being actually profitable.
Huge or well-known companies have collapsed before, even though - because people become so used to them existing - it never quite feels like it will actually happen until it does.
Now it's looking like a competitive blood bath where ever increasing levels of investment is needed just to main market position. Their frontier models are SOTA for 4 weeks before a competitor comes and takes the crown. They are standing on much shakier ground than they were 2 years ago.
By comparison, Anthropic is projected to break even in 2028. Google's Gemini is already profitable.
https://advergroup.com/gemini-hits-650-million-users/
I didn't really realize how big Gemini was until I saw that Qualia was using it, they apparently used 0.01% of Geminis total tokens (100 billion) in about 3 months, they're in production with the title and escrow industry, so that's a great deal of data going through Gemini, unlike some chat subscription this is all API driven, which I doubt Google is charging at a loss for.
https://www.qualia.com/qualia-clear/
Unlike OpenAI, Google has an actual business model, not just strange circular deals.
Edit: I misswrote "majority of" instead of 15% of Google's profits.
This does not at all tell us Gemini is profitable or driving 15% of its profits. The article does not mention profits even once. It then goes on to bizarrely compare Gemini's monthly active users to Open AI's weekly active ones.
It kinda feels like an LLM-generated article that another LLM picked as a "citation", and then no human bothered to check if it actually said what the LLM said it did.
And, really, advergroup.com? Who sites an advertising agency as if it's a reliable resource?
https://advergroup.com/digital-marketing/
"AdverGroup Web Design and Creative Media Solutions is a full service advertising agency that delivers digital marketing services. We manage Google Ad Word campaigns and/or Meta Ad Campaigns for local clients in Chicago, Las Vegas and their surrounding suburbs."
So credible a resource on Gemini's performance/profitability... /sarc
But yeah it doesn't even actually say anything about profits, let alone attribute any specific percentage of profits to Gemini. It just vague marketing copy.
The signal the agent usage is sending though is that Anthropic is way ahead since all we hear about is Claude these days despite OpenAI spending so much more money, Antrophic is also out trialling vending machines,etc.
ChatGPT apart from generating text was a bit of a query/research tool but now that Google has their AI search augmentation shit somewhat together I'm not feeling much need for ChatGPT as a research partner.
So now the big question is, with coding and search niches curtailed, where will OpenAI be able to generate profits from to justify their insane spending?
Also Softbank invested, which is never a great signal.
They also invested in Uber
If investors keep throwing obscene money at OpenAI, sure, they can stay afloat forever. Can't argue with that. But if we're talking about a sustainable business, I still don't see it.
If OpenAI keeps getting circular financing, of course they will not collapse yet.
I think it's still too early to tell. By what measure did you even determine that Nvidia is falling?
Recent high-profile examples include Segway, NFT, Crypto as a whole, pre-tranformers voice assistants and various "Design Thinking" projects like those Amazon prime buttons.
Free ChatGPT chat has made the company a household name, and helped it to persuade investors, but every single one of those free users costs the company money. Most of those free users have proved unwilling to convert to paid users, and adding ads to the free service promises to send it into the same enshittification death spiral so many other companies have fallen into.
Also, how on Earth would your grandma and parents not have heard of crypto? Crypto is frequently front page news, even in print newspapers. There have been crypto superbowl ads. Are they living under a rock?
It was about countering dismissal of all voices of caution as blind dismissal.
Saying X succeeded while people were saying it will fail is just survivorship bias.
Also your parents and grandpa did indeed hear about the Segway.
At one point Jensen Huang will be out (retired or forced by staginating sales) and can definitely look back on a very successful career. That much is certain.