BIS released a larger report in June that identified AI financing/sustainability as one of the biggest risks for the global economy:
But like what happens if the government guarantees open ai's loans if the company is structurally unprofitable? Does the government create an operating subsidy?
The government intervened to prevent massive job losses, protect the domestic auto industry, and, in the 1979 case, preserve critical national security manufacturing, as Chrysler produced the M-1 Abrams tank.
Now, I suppose it is possible to imagine that the US government might bail out either or both of OpenAI or Anthropic (whether or not there's an ROI like there was with the Bank Bailout of the 2008 crisis) if the govt. deemed the technology critical to keep a fast pace on (I think we can say without doubt that requirement is satisfied) but, crucially, the government's calculus is that it is better to have these companies compete rather than bring the knowhow in-house.
Is that what you're thinking?
So it would look like the government taking ownership, letting investors lose their stake, and then operating as inference-only, which would turn a profit
We have absolutely 0 hard proof of this. We have a lot of wishful thinking but no hard numbers, audited numbers from any public entity.
I'd love to see them if they are available.
Do we have the balance sheet for OpenRouter & co?
Especially in this age where if you put AI in your company's mission statement you're drowned in money.
Let's hold off on calling something "cheap" until the external financing money runs out and the actual numbers are revealed AND audited.
> yes it's cheap.
When running toy models that do basically 0 of what regular people expect from state of the art LLMs, sure.
Running Apache is cheap. Running Google search isn't. They both serve web pages.
Running a local LLM isn't a mainstream normal thing to do, sure but saying it's "basically 0 of what regular people expect from state of the art LLMs" is lazily dismissing evidence because it contradicts your beliefs. It does work, and it works at a level somewhere above "basically zero" for nerds who are willing and able to set it up for themselves today. The comparison isn't Apache, it's ElasticSearch. It's not Apache cheap and simple, but it's also not Google Spanner expensive.
Again, you have no way of knowing this. During a bubble a myriad small companies nobody hears about get funded for millions and billions.
Also, plenty of startups max out the founder credit cards and then they go bankrupt.
Let's revisit this discussion and see if 10% of all the companies in OpenRouter are around in 2030.
> is lazily dismissing evidence because it contradicts your beliefs
No, it contradicts my experience. The models you can run on 128GB of VRAM/unified RAM (which is realistically the maximum a regular person can buy) are basically bad compared to Anthropic/OpenAI.
More than that hardware prices spike like crazy (and even if consumers could afford them, the hardware itself is basically a huge DYI project).
Let alone the fact that regular users need to run other things on their system so can't dedicate absolutely everything to the LLM.
Again, the financials of these businesses are at best unproven and at worst critically unsound.
I'm sure the industry will consolidate by 2030, as industry always does.
AI is currently a sunk cost to the US stock industry that is repeating the bad actor scenario. Not a single AI company is profitable and none of them produce deterministic nor cost effective solutions
Microsoft's statment of using AI to find the most resource intensive applications being ran highlights this. Task Manager does the same thing and does not need a server farm for training. It also uses MB of RAM vs GB.
If manufacturing had the same error rate in production as AI, those plants would of went out of business.
Both industries heavy use legal bribes, donations. Politicians will gladly bail them out to take ℅ of the cut in bribes.
Too big to fails are false claims to retain the bad actors that fund politicians. Bad actors need to fail so the good ones can properly operate.
Too big to fail is also allowing large corporations to skirt copyright laws. You or I seeding TB of copyright content would be thrown in jail.
Too big to fail is rebranding of legalizing corruption.
Are you saying that it is likely that at some point in the not too distant future, OpenAI and Anthropic will need bailout-size cash infusions from the US Government to continue existence and that the US government will do it and not face severe political consequences?
I just don't think that chain of events is likely. The current administration pays very close attention voter sentiment.
Didn't they say this themselves? https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/tech/openai-backtracks-go...
> The current administration pays very close attention voter sentiment.
Is that how the Anti-Weaponization Fund came about?
OpenAI backtracked, according to the article you linked to.
> Is that how the Anti-Weaponization Fund came about?
It hasn’t come about has it? It was blocked. Besides, I don’t see the connection with the topic at hand.
In which alternative universe? The amount of bribery and self-enrichment is staggering. The treatment of the war is mind boggling. The actual political moves seem to be designed to punish disloyal republicans rather then win more votes.
Pushing against regulation supposed to prevent this happening again. They also resumed taking a lot of risks, just like before. Their managers got rich while doing the same decisions as before, because other people paid the price.
> What’s the argument for OpenAI being so inherently critical and interweaved with the rest of the economy
It does not need to be inherently critical and interweaved with the rest of the economy. It has to pay the bribe to the right president. The "military necessity" excuse will be used then.
AI companies are more and more interweaved with the economy because half the world is owning their stocks or has lent them money. Or, they have invested in companies that in turn have invested in AI. It is very similar to the situation before the credit crisis.
As the funding profile moves more towards debt, there's a bigger chance for problems as leverage tends to amplify the bad outcomes.
If Big AI (basically Mag 7) continue to issue debt, then there may be financial stability risks if it all blows up. The numbers are fine now, but the trend line is concerning (hence the BIS paper).