By now you have heard about OpenAI’s big revenue snafu. Whoops it’s $50 billion not $70, we were doing our accounting wrong! How silly of us.
Aside from how ridiculous that all is, the real issue is not that they are only at $50 billion in arr. The issue is that they need sustained, gigantic influxes of cash to stay alive short term. They WILL collapse and go under without constant debt issuance and cash infusions. And now ask yourself, what private capital rep on the planet is going to be interested in sending more cash to OpenAI after hearing about the $50b vs $70b? Who is possibly dumb enough to throw more money at that company, when many others who aren’t playing games with their financial reporting also want access to more debt to fund their ai buildout? OpenAI is cooked. Done.
They will continue to be provided access to just enough debt / cash to get them to their ipo, and then it’s lights out. Because that’s the only way the groups that have backed them thus far can have a chance of getting most or all of their capital back. They will go bankrupt after they have issued as many shares as they possibly can to suck every last dollar out of the market. And they will take the entire ai trade and buildout with them. They are too big, and they will fail.
The dotcom comparison happens a lot. Maybe we should all be focusing on what caused it to pop. A bunch of companies that were running on debt ran out of money, and couldn’t get more debt. That will happen again. The only thing that can prevent it is extreme intervention by the government. Which they will no doubt try. Will it work? Who knows. Best to be prepared in the event it doesn’t. Keep your investments safe and strategic.
Edit: to clarify the confusion, because there seems to be a lot. The $70b number came from combining the reported 70% growth rate on the numbers that were reported in August:
OpenAI’s CFO said they hit $20b arr at the end of 2025. Then Bloomberg reported in mid August 2026, that OpenAI was on track for more than $40b in arr, roughly double its end of 2025 run rate. **CNBC then confirmed the $40 billion run rate after CFO Sarah Friar’s August 14 meeting with current shareholders.**
So $40b x 1.7 (70% growth rate) = $68b. So this whole narrative of oh it’s just a mistake of what they count as revenue because they aren’t using the anthropic approach just doesn’t add up. The numbers trace back to an OpenAI reported number. They missed the mark, by a lot, and are trying to pass it off as a different accounting approach.
Edit 2: The story changed again, funny how that happens. Now the claim is that the 70% growth from July means 70% by the end of the year and not 70% since July. Which means it’s not growth, it’s a projection of growth, and it also means it’s not an accounting difference. Amazing how such a critical piece of news has multiple different versions floating around, and OpenAI has opted to not set the record straight. I maintain my stance, they missed growth targets, and are trying to spin it so investors don’t get spooked.