From the Ars Technica article...
OpenAI’s headline “net loss” number of just over $5 billion in 2024 ballooned to nearly $39 billion in 2025. But the 2025 number includes a significant accounting charge related to investor valuations that shifted amid the company’s 2025 conversion to a for-profit structure. The Financial Times cites “a person familiar with the matter” in reporting that this non-recurring charge was approximately $30 billion and that OpenAI’s 2025 net loss amounted to a more reasonable-looking $8 billion without it.
They might not have spent $30b but they likely valued their asset base at >>> $30b+ and had to adjust that at the time of converting to for profit, is how I read it.
“One time non-recurring” is also just accounting double speak that lets executives cover up dumb stuff while sounding plausibly OK.
Profit and loss tracks changes to the fair price of purchasing the business, not operational cash flow. The $30b didn't go anywhere since it's not cash flow, it's acknowledging that someone who purchases OpenAI today would be on the hook for $30b more of future ownership dilution than before 2025.
But we must not forget that the reason they are admired is that our society has rewarded people like that. Our society is fascinated by people like Amodei precisely because, despite being contradictory, we have rewarded those who make money and pull up the ladder behind them.
Also, even if a company is an evil organization, I think people can still serve that evil to make a living. Evil is easy; good is difficult. Most people, rather than being good but poor, would rather be evil but wealthy.
This is the image of an entrepreneur that our capitalist society has wanted all along, so he is simply positioning himself accordingly.
I got my mum onto Apple devices (mac and iPhone) over a decade ago, and support dropped sharply in the first 6 months. These days it's incredibly rare that she needs help with anything, and she does more on the computer than she ever did.
The mac has helped her improve here computer skills and confidence in a way that Windows never did.
As someone with over 30 years experience in computer security, both in corporate as well as boutique security and startup shops, who has been consistently fighting this trend, and recently bearing witness to and engaging in the current AI surge: I can say with absolute confidence that it is only getting and going to get even worse yet.
People like me who know there is a better way are getting pushed harder to lean on AI tooling even though we know that it is making things worse. This isn’t just because our founder/funding overlords are pressing us to do it. The sheer volume of new mission critical code being pumped out enabled by vibe coding is also leaving us little choice but to lean in too just to try and keep up.
We can all see it as clear as day: The tech isn’t ready for any of this. But nobody wants to hear that and everyone is marching off the cliff together anyway. We’re all going to land in the same waste pit together. Raise a glass and whimper.
AI is far better at security than the majority of security professionals. It is a net positive.
People constantly compare AI to this very rare expert human rather than the reality of who is already employed. Experts like you are a major culprit of this. And it puts you at odds with yourself to both admit the industry is full of subpar workers and then lament that they will be replaced with workers that are better, but still worse than you.
What is wrong with someone to make them think in this manner? Is it just a kneejerk response with little thought? Is it ego? Is it a coping mechanism? I find it very strange and interesting and annoying.
I actually agree somewhat with jatora. However a large segment of the top ~20% of security folks are being forced to become reverse centaurs, as opposed to centaurs (disempowered vs empowered) due to the factors I mentioned.
I genuinely see value in the tech, but it is currently being deployed recklessly and stupidly.
You are leaping to the assumption that I don’t actually believe in the tech. This is incorrect. I am griping with the way it is being recklessly and stupidly deployed by poeople who really don’t know what they’re doing.
True. It is a well-known fact that braincells per capita, and technical competence and understanding rapidly increase the higher you are on the management ladder.
You don’t have to limit yourself to the tiny models with the OpenCode Go plan, you can get a lot of usage from the bigger models if you keep the cache hot.
I am about 85% through my quota with 9 days left before refresh and have just used over 1B tokens, mostly DeepSeek V4 Pro, but also a little mimo 2.5 pro and kimi k2.6
For sure, I've been flipping between flash/pro (or the equivalent for other families), been trying to stick to one family per project as a way to test them out independently over longer periods and more realistic/diverse tasks. I've definitely spent more quota on pro and pushed more tokens through flash.
Valve made the Linux market work by bloody persistence, because Gabe Newell saw the Microsoft Store as a threat to turn Windows into a walled garden (which would have hurt Steam a lot). It's not the Linux user base as such which attracted Valve.
But it's really beside the point, since supporting games on an OS is a hell of a lot harder than supporting video. You're right that movie stores have no excuse - except the control argument, working the other way than it did for Valve.
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