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OpenAI is reportedly preparing a 60-second spot for Super Bowl LX.
Last year’s debut positioned ChatGPT alongside fire, the wheel, and printing presses as one of humanity’s great innovations. Subtle stuff. Expect less hubris this year.
Like most businesses, the poetry of OpenAI’s introduction is rapidly being replaced by the prose of profit projection. And it’s not an easy read.
At first sight, OpenAI looks spectacular. Recurring revenue hit $20 billion in 2025, a tenfold increase in two years. ChatGPT has recruited 800 million active users, and more than a million businesses now pay for the service. Genuinely extraordinary numbers. If revenue were the only measure, Sam Altman would be the most successful CEO since the invention of electricity.
But profit is the metric that ultimately counts. Deutsche Bank estimates the company will accumulate $143 billion in negative cumulative free cash flow between 2024 and 2029. That’s fancy Wall Street talk for a giant hole.
“No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale,” the Bank concluded last October. “We are firmly in uncharted territory.”
Uncharted because the category and its associated tech is formative. Uncharted because OpenAI estimates it needs to grow last year’s already gargantuan revenues tenfold to become profitable. Uncharted because the company has committed to $1.4 trillion — yes, trillion — in infrastructure deals. Uncharted because with only $17 billion in cash reserves, OpenAI needs enormous additional funding to survive beyond 2027, never mind 2030, when Altman claims things become profitable.
I know, I know — you need to lose to make money. Amazon proudly, famously, spent five years losing $1 billion before turning a profit. But the scale of OpenAI’s losses make Amazon’s early burn rate look like a rounding error.
And while Silicon Valley was genuflecting at the altar of Sam Altman, Warren Buffett — the man who famously avoided tech stocks for decades — did something interesting late last year. In his final big deal, Berkshire Hathaway took a $4 billion stake in Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Buffett did that because Google has something OpenAI doesn’t: a clear path to profit.
Google Cloud is growing at 34% annually, already generating over $50 billion in revenue. More importantly, their operating margins are expanding, hitting 24% in recent quarters with room to grow. They own their infrastructure. They make their own chips. They service others. When OpenAI needs more computing power, they literally go to Google to buy it.
