this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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I mean we haven’t figured out how to make AI profitable yet, and though it’s a cool technology with real world use cases, nobody has proven yet that the juice is worth the squeeze. There’s an unimaginable amount of money tied up in a technology on the hope that one day they find a way to make it profitable and though AI as a technology “improves”, its journey towards providing more value than it costs to run is not.
If I roleplayed as somebody who desperately wanted AI to succeed, my first question would be “What is the plan to have AI make money?” And so far nobody, not even the technology’s biggest sycophants have an answer.
The profit of ai lies in this: mass surveillance and ads. Thats it.
The revenue of AI lies in mass surveillance and ads. But even going full dystopia, that has not been enough to make AI companies profitable.
Millennials are killing the mass surveillance and advertising industry!
AI is absolutely profitable just not for everybody.
AI as a technology is so far not profitable for anybody. The hardware AI runs on is profitable, as might be some start ups that are heavily leveraging AI, but actually operating AI is so far not profitable, and because increasingly smaller improvements in AI use exponentially more power, there’s no real path that is visible to any of us today that suggests anyone’s yet found a path to profitability. Aside from some kind of miracle out of left field that no one today has even conceived, the long term outlook isn’t great.
If AI as a technology busts, so does the insane profits behind the hardware it runs on. And without that left field technological breakthrough, the only option to pursue to avoid AI going completely bust is to raise prices astronomically, which would bust any companies currently dependent on all the AI currently being provided to them for basically next to nothing.
The entire industry is operating at a loss, but is being propped up by the currently abstract idea that AI will some day make money. This isn’t the “AI Hater” viewpoint, it’s just the spot AI is currently in. If you think AI is here to stay, you’re placing a bet on a promise that nobody as of today can actually make.
Absolute delusion right here
Delusion? Ok let’s get it straight from the horse’s mouth then. I’ve asked ChatGPT if OpenAI is profitable, and to explain its financial outlook. What you see below, emphasis and emojis, are generated by ChatGPT:
—ChatGPT—
OpenAI is not currently profitable. Despite its rapid growth, the company continues to operate at a substantial loss.
📊 Financial Snapshot
Annual recurring revenue (ARR) was reported at approximately $12 billion as of July 2025, implying around $1 billion per month in revenue.
Projected total revenue for 2025 is $12.7 billion, up from roughly $3.7 billion in 2024.
However, OpenAI's cash burn has increased, with projected operational losses around $8 billion in 2025 alone
—end ChatGPT—
The most favorable projections are that OpenAI will not be cash positive (That means making a single dollar in profit) until it reached 129 billion dollars in revenue. That means that OPENAI has to make more than 10X their annual revenue to finally be profitable. And their current strategy to make more money is to expand their infrastructure to take on more customers and run more powerful systems. The problem is, the models require substantially more power to make moderate gains in accurate and capability. And every new AI datacenter means more land cost, engineers, water, and electricity. Compounding the issue is that the more electricity they use, the more it costs. NJ has paved the way for a number of new huge AI datacenters in the past few years and the cost of electricity in the state has skyrocketed. People are seeing their monthly electric bills raised by 50-150% in the last couple months alone. Thats forcing not only people out of their homes, but eats substantially into revenue growth for data centers. It’s quite literally a race for AI companies to reach profitability before hitting the natural limits to the resources they require to expand. And I haven’t heard a peep about how they expect to do so.
You use one company thats is spearheading the entire industry as your example that no AI company is profitable. Either you are argueing in extremely bad faith or you're invredibly stupid I'm sorry.
Of course I used the company that is the market leader in AI as an example that AI companies are not profitable you donut, that’s how that works.
They’re not the only AI company that’s not profitable, like I said none of them are. You can take your pick if you don’t like OpenAI as an example.
Thats like saying ride hailing and food delivery is not profitable because Uber is not profitable in the US.
I work in a profitable AI company and can list you a hundred more. I'm not sure what's the point of this delusional lie?
No startup is profitable - thats by design because profit seeking is not what makes your company successful. No wonder average American struggles financially with this poor understanding of basic financing.
Cleaely you're argueing in bad faith and I see no point in educating you so continue to stew in your hate while everyone else grows, bye.
Uber is profitable and has been for years now. They also never faced the insurmountable challenges that AI companies do today.
No you don’t and no you can’t. If you could, you would have done so by now.
Startups generally have a plan and realistic path to profitability, unlike the AI companies of today who are not profitable, and have no concrete plan to become so. The “profit seeking” investment phase is what startups survive on until they reach profitability. But many (most) startups do not do so and go bust. The same will happen to AI if they don’t become profitable.
You may continue to live in your fantasy world based on nothing but hope and strong feelings, but you’ve failed to educate anyone here on anything besides your own ignorance. You are free to stick your fingers in your ears and your head in the sand.
Who is it profitable for right now? The only ones I see are the ones selling shovels in a gold rush, like Nvidia.
Every AI software company? So much ignorance in this thread its almost impossible to respond to. Llm queries are super cheap already and very much profitable.