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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[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 216 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

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

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 60 points 3 weeks ago (2 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 weeks ago (4 children)

Wait, where? I wanna read and savour it.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 26 points 3 weeks 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.

[–] vane@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

savour

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

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[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

lol they havnt even put the ads in yet

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

They don't have a product with any actual value or use cases. The ads aren't going to reverse that. If it were that simple then they would have been able to make profit with their subscription model.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think we’re quite a long way off before they actually crash and burn, if they ever do. We have no idea how much money the ads will inject and they also receive significant government contracts and will probably get a lot more going forward

If the market can pretend Tesla is worth so much i think it can easily sustain AI for many years

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's already been several years. Tesla had an actual product that people wanted. Yes, they've been doing their best of late to torpedo their market share and brand name but at one point they were doing what they set out to do. Open AI has never done what they said they would do.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Kinda but also not entirely. I know a lot of people who use ChatGPT and other AIs at work and it does basically exactly what they want and just gets better

I’m not a proponent but the naysayer doomers are almost as wrong as the tech evangelists

Is it overvalued? Sure

Is it worthless? Absolutely not

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

That's cool. I have yet to find a use case for AI. Am I doing it wrong or are they just bad with computers?

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[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

Note that Tesla was clearly a viable business, I don't see the justification for it being 3 times the value of ford, gm, Toyota, and Honda all put together.

Generally people are not challenging the fundamental possibility of these as viable business, just that they don't make sense at their valuations.

Though I'll agree that open ai particularly should get some skepticism. To the extent that actionable business models might emerge, I don't see openai actually in a position to be a big party of any of it. Microsoft and Anthropic seem to mostly own business revenue, ChatGPT is generally not even providing the models people select when they are able to choose.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 14 points 3 weeks ago

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

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Doubt that'll happen for a few mor years unfortunately. I can't imagine most of the hardware made for AI datacenters is compatible with consumer stuff :/

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 9 points 3 weeks ago

A lot of it hasn't actually been made, though. The AI companies have put in orders for future production. That future capacity can be redirected with a wave of a pen.

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[–] anakin78z@lemmy.world 82 points 3 weeks 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 weeks 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.

[–] Grolly@feddit.dk 8 points 3 weeks ago

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

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

Robotics. It will be a pivot to robotics.

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[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 5 points 3 weeks ago

Don't forget, though, it does that one thing for that one reason I forgot already as I typed it... But its still good, clearly!

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 66 points 3 weeks 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.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 3 weeks ago

This would be like Big Oil investing in Enron, no?

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

I miss consistent weather.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 weeks ago

The hurricanes keep getting stronger

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 46 points 3 weeks 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 16 points 3 weeks ago (5 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.

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

Oh no....

Anyway.

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

and so it does

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

So it begins

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 34 points 3 weeks 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.

[–] GarbadgeGoober@feddit.org 8 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for sharing, really insightful.

In my personal opinion after being also responsible in AI for our company, I do not see how it will be profitable for them.

For example Microsoft Copilot license, costs 30$/month, but a lot of things I can do with it a free Chatbot can do too.

It definitely has it strengths and use cases and I am sure it will not go away. But it is not the way the market it as a full AI, it just generates answers with the highest probability. I cannot see it developing from there to the real AI.

I think this year will be really interesting to watch all the AI companies, especially Oracle as they have to refinance a lot. If one falls it will send them into to a spiral, the big companies will be fine, but I am sure they will cut their funding of OpenAI.

But who knows could be the other way around and OpenAI finds anything new to make them more profitable.

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

The AI ouroboros if finally consuming itself.

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

Sucks to suck

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

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

[–] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 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.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You need to do a custom program if you want to do that. I mean a traditional program where variables are stored properly.

The models have no memory at all, at every question it starts from scratch, so the clients are just "pretending" it has a memory by simply including all previous questions and answers in your last query. You reply "ok", but the model is getting thousands of words with all the history.

Because each question becomes exponentially expensive, at some point it starts to prune old stuff. It either truncates the content (for example the completely useless meta ai chatbot that WhatsApp forced down the throat loses context after 2-3 questions) or it uses the model itself to have a condensed resume of past interactions, but this is how it hallucinates.

Otherwise it will cost like $1 per question and more

[–] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Which kind of illustrates the fundamental flaw right? Videogame companies have spent decades creating replayable DnD esc experiences that are far more memory efficient and cost effective. They already kind of do it the best way. AI can assist, and things like the machine learning behind the behaviors of the NPCs in Arc Raiders for example is very cool, but as you said, you need a custom program... which is what a video game is, so I guess my point is I don't see the appeal in re-inventing it through sort of automated reverse engineering.

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

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

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 11 points 3 weeks 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 3 weeks ago (4 children)
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I hope it burns. Altman can kick rocks.

[–] ell1e@leminal.space 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
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