tldr is: They either get a successful IPO to stave off bankruptcy for a couple more months, or they're going to be bankrupt by the beginning of next year.
That said, $2T was spent during GWOT with another $8T in veteran care, DHS, interest in debt.
Current AI spend this year is expected to be $2.59T (chips, infra, etc)
Anthropic and OpenAI have no choice but to go public if they want to avoid bankruptcy. Venture capital firms are struggling to raise more capital, the bond market is so saturated that the borrowing costs are getting too high and big tech is also at the limit of how much they can invest, all while AI companies' costs are going through the roof. Retail investors is the last market they haven't tapped into and to do that, they have to go public. There's just no way around it.
...that's not how bankruptcy happens. What is this guy's background?
Assets on a balance sheet are held at book value. You can absolutely run GAAP losses that exceed net assets without running into bankruptcy, particularly if you're granting (and having employees exercise) options.
The critical measures are cash in and out and debt-like obligations. None of those metrics point to OpenAI going bankrupt this year unless they do something really fucking creative. (Which, to be clear, is Altman's M.O.)
If we assume a 2026 revenue of 23B (Q1 2026 revenue x4) and costs of 70B (2025 costs * (2026 revenue / 2025 revenue)), even those 25B in cash reserves won't mean much. And this napkin math even ignores their debt obligations. So either they raise money in the range of 50-75B this year (actual money, not datacenter vouchers), or ...
[0] https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
If all those costs are cash costs, sure. When OpenAI gets non-cash investment, and it "burns" that investment on compute, that should be counted as a GAAP expense. Yet it doesn't touch cash. (It would destroy a unit of compute asset. But again, book versus market value can mess with how that works intuitively.)
Similarly, if you're granting lots and lots of options they're going to generate lots and lots of compensation expenses (and thus losses) as they vest. These aren't cash expenses, however.