this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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I would think that this warning, in a way or another, is true in every kind of investment, even my bank's personal investment have something like it.
Not framed like that. You have to acknowledge that investments can depreciate rather than appreciate and that you may lose your money, sure. That’s very different to saying that you acknowledge that you probably will lose your money and that you consider your investment a donation.
I think that this is just a technical difference based on what you are investing into.
A personal bank's investement is a different thing than a investement in a startup, with different level of risks and revenue.
VCs typically want a return on their investments
With a bank investement I get something back, even if less than what I invested. Could OpenAI pay back even half of what received ?
Which send us back to the starting point: what will happen when the VCs will start to ask for their money back or for their share of the revenue ? Inevitably the bubble will pop.
At the moment OpenAI can’t pay back anything, becuase they’re hemmorhaging money. Losing billions a year. And there’s no path to profitability.
That’s why they make investors confirm that they’re considering their investments a donation. That’s also why it’s unusual.
It’s not unusual for the opening phases of big tech companies to be “operate at a massive loss until the competition has gone out of business”, as companies like Netflix and Uber can attest, but it is unusual for that to be done where the investors aren’t expecting to make a profit.