this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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The immediate catalyst, it seems, is an intensifying focus on capex, or capital expenditures. Microsoft revealed that its spending surged 66% to $37.5 billion in the latest quarter, even as growth in its Azure cloud business cooled slightly. Even more concerning to analysts, however, was a new disclosure that approximately 45% of the company’s $625 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO)—a key measure of future cloud contracts—is tied directly to OpenAI, the company revealed after reporting earnings Wednesday afternoon. (Microsoft is both a major investor in and a provider of cloud-computing services to OpenAI.)

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[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 10 points 1 day ago

owing to a slight miss on revenue

Nope, try again.

spending surged 66% to $37.5 billion in the latest quarter ... approximately 45% of the company’s $625 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO)—a key measure of future cloud contracts—is tied directly to OpenAI

Ding ding ding! That's right, OpenAI, the company where being profitable is a physical and mathematical impossibility!

[–] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Off topic, but interesting username. Are you a fan? Wait, are you him?

[–] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not him haha. Big fan indeed! He is an unclassifiable art man even within the super eclectic cinema landscape that are Korean movies.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

Oh yes indeed. Ultimately I watch more Korean movies than Japanese ones, I would say 2:1 so yes, typo. His Yakuza movies are masterpieces

I hope it burns. Altman can kick rocks.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 214 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Please fucking crash I want to be able to buy basic computing hardware again

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

So much money is tied up in AI, that when it crashes you're likely to end up poor, or worse, homeless, than being able to afford anything.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wonder how fast you could run Farcry on one of those AI GPU units.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Pretty sure MS will just seize the OpenAi data centers and repurpose them for Azure and rent out compute time or use it for XBox streaming. Non of the hardware will reach the open market.

[–] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Regardless of who owns it or what they do with it, those GPUs will get sold on the used market with plenty of life left. Older AI GPUs, networking equipment (eg 100GbE), SAS drives, etc have been easy to find on eBay and other sites for a long time, because data centers replace hardware long before it's expected to fail.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Exactly. They have like an 8 year depreciation, but they supposedly become obsolete in a couple of years for whatever cutting edge AI is supposed to be.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 59 points 3 days ago (30 children)

Since OpenAI just announced the possibility of bankruptcy, it's definitely coming. It's going to be wild for whichever idiot in charge at MS to go down in history as the man who ruined one of the most powerful and integral companies on earth.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 28 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Wait, where? I wanna read and savour it.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

In her new letter to OpenAI, Senator Warren requested additional information regarding OpenAI’s business model, its plans to fulfill its spending commitments, and its appeal to the White House for taxpayer support by February 13, 2026.

There is big shit show going on.

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-presses-openai-ceo-on-spending-commitments-and-bailout-requests-after-cfo-suggests-government-backstop

edit: original letter https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_openai_from_senator_warren.pdf

[–] stylusmobilus@aussie.zone 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

savour

Unfortunately that stops pretty quickly when you realise there will be a bailout

Yup. Privatize profits, socialize losses. It’s the way the capitalist machine is able to keep grinding up orphans for the 1%.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 26 points 3 days ago (1 children)

idk, it was late last year that Sam said he expected OpenAI revenue to grow steeply, but also that if it doesn't then the company could go bankrupt by 2027 at the latest.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 14 points 2 days ago

I'm ready for all those tech psychos to go down, and take Tesla with them.

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[–] anakin78z@lemmy.world 82 points 3 days ago (3 children)

"market reaction suggests that more capital isn’t going to be a viable substitute for a business model anymore."

Time to find the next vague thing that investors can pour trillions into without really knowing what it is or does.

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 42 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It'll be quantum computing. Since the last hype around it, a lot of progress has been made to the point that quantum computers are actually becoming useful, since error correction is now mostly resolved.

[–] slowcakes@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

The amount of cooling they need for a simple quantum CPU with 104 qubits. Can you even do anything with it that is useful, you can't even brake encryption because you don't have enough processing power.

The science is advancing, but then as always is the question of, how you scale it to be economical viable, which is a hard problem by it self to solve.

Don't think the market is interested in tech that they can't hype, or have a natural hype cycle.

[–] Grolly@feddit.dk 8 points 2 days ago

I would be surprised. Quantum computers haven't even been proven to be theoretically useful.

[–] purrtastic@lemmy.nz 13 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Robotics. It will be a pivot to robotics.

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 50 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I miss consistent weather.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 days ago

The hurricanes keep getting stronger

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A company with a $3.2T market share. The game is made up and the points don't matter.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

3.2 trillion is a stupid amount of money, but it isn't all liquid. A 440 billion dollar hit (nearly 14%) would be very, very bad for them.

With the memory and SSD fiasco going on right now, fewer people are buying new PCs, which impacts their sales. Combined with the Windows 11 fiasco, the massive gaming division investments going nowhere, and the AI bubble, they're probably the most vulnerable they've been in decades.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OEM license revenue represents a tiny tiny bit of their financials these days. They could just charge nothing for it and business wise no one probably notice much of a difference.

It is foundational to a lot of what they do, but older devices are just as good for their subscription and tie in revenue. Hell I use my work subscription for office from Linux, complete with OneDrive filesystem synchronization. Microsoft gets all their money from my headcount even as I don't even use Windows.

But that capex could bite them hard if revenue falls to follow from it. That's pretty much the only exposure investors care about.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

OEM licensing isn't the important part. It's everything that comes with it. Subscriptions, cloud storage, etc. In my city, a bunch of field workers are being moved from laptops to iPads and phones with the next hardware refresh due to the price jump in laptops. Microsoft won't have integrated Onedrive and SharePoint and full Office Subscriptions for them.

We already use third-party web apps that aren't Microsoft (and are mostly hosted by AWS) for a lot of their work, so the only Microsoft product they'll have is an email address.

Us abandoning the Windows laptops costs Microsoft hundreds a year per employee.

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 66 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The real lesson here is that if you are a company that was founded on stupid imaginary bullshit your investors are comfortable with investing in stupid imaginary bullshit and it isn't going to hurt your price.

When you are a legacy tech company whose investors expect you to actually make products that you sell for money, they don't like to hear that blew every penny you had on fucking magic beans.

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[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 37 points 3 days ago

and so it does

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

OpenAI has made about $1.4 trillion in commitments to procure both the energy and compute it needs to fuel its operations. But its revenue barely crossed $20 billion in 2025.

Investors are increasingly critical of what they describe as “circular” deals involving the industry’s biggest players. On Wednesday evening, The Information reported that OpenAI is seeking a fresh $60 billion in funding from heavyweights like Nvidia and Amazon. However, market reaction suggests that more capital isn’t going to be a viable substitute for a business model anymore. “Maybe Oracle stock got way ahead of fundamentals, and now the market’s saying, ‘All right, show me, I want to see it,’” Eric Diton, president of the Wealth Alliance, told**Yahoo Finance.

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[–] hellothere@sh.itjust.works 38 points 3 days ago

Oh no....

Anyway.

[–] unnamed1@feddit.org 36 points 3 days ago

So it begins

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago

The AI ouroboros if finally consuming itself.

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 24 points 3 days ago

Wait.

You mean that dedicating the majority of their business to buying things from themselves has not proven to be a sound strategy in the eyes of investors?

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 24 points 3 days ago

Sucks to suck

[–] redbrick@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I hate AI...it never was AI. It was useless in all my tests.

[–] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

The gig was up for me when I tried to get it to play dungeon master in a game of DnD. It would start out great, but eventually it would forget what we were doing and instead of giving me choices it started just telling me the story of me playing dnd and it would stop giving me options. This would happen about 6 minutes into playing, or 3 or 4 "turns", and that's when I realized the incredible memory sync it is if it can't reference instructions given moments ago. A newer model won't fix that.

At the end of the day it's complex predictive text that amounts to a Rorschach test.

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[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 17 points 3 days ago

Looks like that magic well of social permission is about to dry up.

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