OpenAI isn't profitable. Should that be normal?
www.salon.com
Maybe companies should be judged on their ability to effect change rather than hard dollars-and-cents.
  • Zos_KiaEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    Oh thanks for clarifying in even more excruciating details how a subtraction works that is really helpful.

    Why would you repeat the lie that they’re “usually unprofitable” when the information is publically available in a million places on the internet ? In 2023 Amazon made :

    • 575B$ in sales
    • If you remove costs of goods that’s 270B$ in gross profit
    • If you remove operating expenses (including R&D) that’s 30B$ in net income

    Amazon is factually not “usually unprofitable”, they have in fact made profit (as in money which actually goes into your pocket after discounting all expenses) every year for the last 15 years except in 2022 and some tiny losses in 2014 and 2012.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      The company started in 1994, posted it’s first profitable year in 2001, and had little or no profit through 2014. So for the first 20 years or 2/3 of the entire history of the company, they were unprofitable or barely profitable.

      That’s my point, Amazon has historically been hugely unprofitable, so looking only at profit doesn’t tell the full story.

      OpenAI was founded ~9 years ago, which isn’t all that different from the timeline for Amazon. They are in very different markets (ironically more similar now with AWS getting huge), with Amazon starting as a logistics company and OpenAI being a pure tech company, so the financials of both will look quite different.

      • Zos_KiaEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        So for the first 20 years or 2/3 of the entire history of the company, they were unprofitable or barely profitable.

        We must have a wildly different definition of “barely profitable”. Half a billion in 2004 money is a lot of profit, a billion back to back in 2009 and 2010 is a lot of profit.

        I think you’re confusing Amazon with the next generation of loss-leader companies. Let’s talk Uber, let’s talk Twitter, if we want to point at “hugely unprofitable” companies. But Amazon is a beast of its own, they have a very coherent financial story. Even during their money-losing decade they posted insane results, frequently multiplying revenue while barely increasing operating costs.