OpenAI spending hit $34bn last year ahead of planned IPO

Audited figures reveal mounting costs from model development, infrastructure and rapid expansion

misk 2 points 7 days ago

This is with all the free compute they’re getting from Microsoft, who are MUCH deeper in the hole on their LLM business profitability.

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eestileib 3 points 7 days ago

Even then they're still pumping money to MSFT

In the 2025 calendar year, OpenAI paid Microsoft $10.59 billion for “Research and development” expenses. We believe this most likely refers to the cost of training OpenAI’s models.

The documents also mention a $6.047 billion charge related to “cost of revenue,” a $527 million charge for sales and marketing, and $42 million in “general and administrative expenses.” In total, OpenAI’s expenses to Microsoft amounted to $17.2 billion.

I'm starting to think this is not all on the up and up.

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deadbeef79000 1 point 7 days ago

"cost of revenue" sounds like "cost of goods sold" in a business with tangible products. Rather. It cost $6 of cloud to sell that $34 service

R&D can probably be amortized over the lifetime of the product, in this case the model's useful sellable lifetime. But a chunk of that is renting compute from MS and the bill's due.

Doesn't sound any more fishy than any other business throwing $b around.

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