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- [00:00]
Will Pearson
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart. In a world of economic uncertainty and workplace transformation, learn to lead by example from visionary C suite executives like Shannon Schuyler of PwC and and Will Pearson of iHeartMedia.
- [00:28]
Ed Zitron
The good teacher explains the great teacher inspires. Don't always leave your team to do the work that's been the most important part of how to lead by example.
- [00:40]
Will Pearson
Listen to Leading by Example executives making.
- [00:43]
Morgan Sung
An impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
- [00:46]
Will Pearson
Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:52]
Shannon Schuyler
Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from kqed where every week we reveal how the online work world collides with everyday life.
- [01:00]
Ed Zitron
You don't know what's true or not because you don't know if AI was involved in it.
- [01:04]
Shannon Schuyler
So my first reaction was, haha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real?
- [01:11]
Ed Zitron
And I think we will see a.
- [01:12]
Shannon Schuyler
Twitch streamer president maybe within our lifetimes. You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [01:22]
Ed Zitron
Call Zone Media hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron. Better Offline. Now, before we go any further, I hate to ask you to do this, but I need your help. I'm up for this year's Webby's for the best Business Podcast award. I know it's a pain in the ass to register, but can you sign up and vote for Better Offline? Never won an award in my life and I have enough listeners that I think we can tip the scales. But on with the show. The following two part episode is the culmination of months of research presenting a case I've been making in part since July of last year. OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. A company that unrepentantly and needlessly burns billions of dollars with no end in sight, helmed by a cretinous, disingenuous billionaire who continually lies about what it is that it will do. Because he, like I've been saying since last year, know that generative AI can't do much more than it does today. What I'm going to lay out for you is my case that OpenAI can't survive, that it's borderline impossible under any of the current terms for this company to continue, and that its demise will bring about the death of or significant harm of several other firms. A cottage industry of despicable billion dollar burn rate capitalistic monstrosities has sprung up around this stupid fucking company in the hopes of further inflating a bubble set to burst at any moment. My disgust for the parties involved is unrelenting, as is my disgust for a media industry that failed to even attempt to tackle the subject matter I'm going to detail. I believe at the end of these episodes you'll see my point, and at the very least agree that OpenAI's current situation is totally untenable. If I'm right, OpenAI will go down in history as an abdication of due diligence, fiscal responsibility, and frankly, common sense, both in the venture capitalists and entities that propped it up, and a tech media that was more concerned with taking detailed notes on my comings and goings than knowing their ass from their ear hole. Those who have failed to hold men like Sam Altman and Dara Amedei accountable have tacitly approved a financial and environmentally destructive movement that will lead to very little actually happening or changing in the world other than damaging our power grid and the theft of art from millions of people. These episodes will be full of numbers and statements and very few declarations or personal opinions, though probably a few swear words if I'm honest. I don't need to get that personal here. The numbers in question, they're damaging, they're staggering, they're worrying, and ultimately spell collapse. The truth is, we don't even need to talk about tariffs for things to go sideways. For this industry, the price of a GPU could rise 100%, or it could halve. It really wouldn't make much of a difference to OpenAI's chances of survival. That's how bad the fundamentals are. And to illustrate that point, I'm going to ask a number of relatively simple questions over the next couple of episodes and make an attempt to answer them. First, let's start with something simple. How much cash does OpenAI have? At the start of April, OpenAI closed what was called the largest private tech funding round in history, where it raised an astonishing $40 billion. And the reason I'm saying this with a sarcastic inflection is that OpenAI has only actually raised $10 billion of the $40 billion, with the rest arriving by the end of the year. And even as I record this, I don't know if the money's actually going gone. Yeah, I'll get into that in a minute. Now, a lot can happen in a year. And the remaining $30 billion, $20 billion of which will allegedly be provided by SoftBank, is partially contingent on OpenAI's conversion from a nonprofit to a for profit by the end of 2025. And if it fails, SoftBank will only give OpenAI a further $20 billion. I'll get into how fucking stupid this gets later. The round also valued OpenAI an astonishing $300 billion. To put that in context, OpenAI had revenues of 4 billion dol. This deal values OpenAI at 75 times its revenue. That's more than Tesla, even at its most ludicrous peak. I also want to add that as of writing this sentence, this money is yet to arrive. Maybe it will arrive by the time this is out. Maybe it won't really make me look stupid. But based on SoftBank's filings, which I'll link to in the spreadsheet for this episode, say that the money will arrive mid April. It's April 14th as I'm recording this, and that SoftBank would be borrowing as much of 2 as $10 billion of the financing for the round, with the option to syndicate. Meaning you bring in other investors, the rest of them. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume the money actually arrives, though filings also suggest that, and I'm quoting in certain circumstances, the second $30 billion tranche could arrive in early 2026. This isn't great. It also seems that SoftBank's $10 billion commitment is contingent on getting a loan. As it says it's financed through borrowings from Mizuho Bank Limited among other financial institutions. SoftBank's had plenty of loans in the past, so I think they're gonna get it, but I think this is one of their biggest OpenAI also revealed it now has 20 million paying subscribers and over 500 million weekly active users. If you're wondering why it doesn't talk about monthly users, it's because they're likely much higher than 500 million, which would reveal exactly how poorly OpenAI converts free ChatGPT users to paying ones. The Information reported back in January that OpenAI was generating $25 million in revenue a month from its $200 a month Pro subscribers. And just so we're clear, they lose money on every one of those too, suggesting that they have around 125,000 ChatGPT Pro subscribers each losing the money somehow. Assuming the other 19,875,000 users are paying 20 bucks a month, that puts revenue at about $423 million a month, or at least $5 billion a year from ChatGPT subscriptions. This is what reporters annualized revenue, by the way. It's literally the month, the monthly revenue, the money they're making in one month, multiplied by 12. And you'll be surprised to hear that people play silly buggers with that all the time. In March, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI expects its revenue to triple to $12.7 billion in 2025. Assuming a similar split of revenue to 2024, this would require OpenAI to nearly double its annualized subscription revenue from Q1 2025 from $5 billion right now to around $9.27 billion, and nearly quadruple API revenue from 2024's revenue of 1 billion, which includes Microsoft's 20% payment for access to OpenAI's models. And that would get them about 3.43 billion. You don't need to super worry about these numbers, and I realize these are messy numbers. It's just unclear how OpenAI intends to pull any of this off. It's an incredible leap. And OpenAI's own plans don't exactly inspire confidence. They're really good at getting free subscribers. They, they don't seem to be able to get paying ones in quite the same number. And also they even lose the money. Every time I think about this company, I start feeling a little crazy, if I'm honest. Anyway, the information reported in February that the OpenAI plan to grow its revenue by making $3 billion a year selling agents with ChatGPT subscriptions. $7.9 billion an API calls $1.8 billion making up the rest. This is of course, what's the technical term? Oh, it's bollocks. It's complete fucking bollocks. I'm sorry. Agents, by the way, are AI chatbots that can do something like interact with another program on the user behalf. OpenAI's agents can't even do the simplest tasks. And $3 billion of the $12.7 billion figure appears to be a commitment made by SoftBank to purchase $3 billion a year of OpenAI's tech. Now let's parse out these numbers precisely so. Incoming monthly revenue, roughly $425 million, give or take. Theoretical revenue from SoftBank's completely made up thing, $250 million a month. However, I really can find no proof that SoftBank bank has begun to make these payments, or indeed that it intends to make them, or even how it intends to. Now, let's talk liquidity. OpenAI has $10 billion that they're yet to receive as of recording this, but let's assume they get it, and it will be $10 billion $7.5 billion from SoftBank and a syndicate of investors, including Microsoft and Kutchu and a few others potentially. There's also an indeterminate amount of remaining capital on the $4 billion credit facility provided by multiple banks back in October 2024, and that was raised alongside a funding round that valued the company 157. Now, as a note, the October announcement stated that OpenAI had access to over $10 billion in liquidity, giving us a sense of how fast it's burning through the cash it has on hand, as that was pretty much all the money they'd raised at the time. Based on reports, OpenAI will not have access to the rest of the $40 billion that SoftBank is funding them with until the end of the year. And it's unclear what part of the end of the year that is, but SoftBank's filing says December will it be December 1st? Will it be Christmas time? Will Sam Altman look under the tree and Masayoshi san will be there? We'll find out, won't we? But we can assume in this case that OpenAI likely has, in the best case scenario, access to about roughly $16 billion in liquidity at any given time. It's reasonable to believe that OpenAI will raise more debt this year despite this massive raise, and I'd estimate it does so to the tune of around 5 or 6 billion dollars. Without it, I'm genuinely not sure what they're going to do. And as a reminder, kids, OpenAI loses money on every single user, free or paying.
- [10:39]
Will Pearson
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844, iHeart to get started. That's 844-844, iheart.
- [11:12]
Shannon Schuyler
Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from kqed, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.
- [11:19]
Ed Zitron
You don't know what's true or not because you don't know if AI was involved in it.
- [11:24]
Shannon Schuyler
So my first reaction was, haha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real?
- [11:31]
Ed Zitron
And I think we will see a.
- [11:32]
Shannon Schuyler
Twitch streamer President maybe within our lifetimes. You can find Close all tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [11:43]
Ed Zitron
Now here's my next question. What are OpenAI's obligations? Now when I put out how does OpenAI survive? And OpenAI is a bad business, I used reported information to explain how this company was at its core unsustainable. I'll link to the newsletters in the spreadsheet and the podcast too, but let's refresh our memory, shall we? Okay, Compute costs at least $13 billion of which are going to Microsoft alone in 2025, and as much as $594 million to my favorite company, Coreweave. Core Weave's back. Every time I think I got away from Coreweave, they pop out like a sour turd coming back in the toilet. Anyway, it seems from even a cursory glance that OpenAI's costs are increasing dramatically. The information reported earlier in the year that OpenAI projects to spend $13 billion on compute with Microsoft alone in 2025, nearly tripling what it spent in total compute in 2024, which was $5 billion, with 3 billion for training and 2 billion for running their models. This suggests that OpenAI's costs are skyrocketing, and that was before the launch of their new image generator, which led to multiple complaints from Sam Altman about a lack of available GPUs, leading to OpenAI's terrible little man CEO saying that he expected stuff to break and delays in new products. Nevertheless, even if we assume OpenAI factored in the COMPUTE increases into its projections, it still expects to pay that $13 billion to Microsoft alone. This number, however, doesn't include the $12.9 billion five year long compute deal signed with COR. That was a result of Microsoft declining to pick up the option to buy the compute themselves for OpenAI. As an aside, from what I am hearing, and this is sources telling me, most of the Microsoft compute was OpenAI. It was basically they they put a OpenAI sticker over Microsoft. It's basically the same thing now. Payments for this deal with with OpenAI and Coreweave, they start in October 2025, according to the information. And assuming that it's even paid or like evenly paid or even like anyone gets any cash. But these contracts are weird. You never know exactly how they're paid. This would still amount to roughly $2.38 billion a year. However, for the sake of argument, let's consider the payments are around $198 million a month, though there are scenarios such as say, Core Weave's build out partner not being able to build the data centers, or Core Weave not having the money to pay to build them, where OpenAI might end up paying less. And don't worry, I'll get to that later. Let's talk about Stargate. You about Star. You heard this? You seen this? Stargate is this data center project that OpenAI is going into and they've dedicated somewhere in the region of $19 billion to this project, along with another $19 billion provided by SoftBank at some indeterminate time. And there are other partners too, like Oracle. It's not even obvious what they're putting in either. One thing I can tell you though is the Trump administration is not actually spending any money on this. Anyone. I've had tons of people emailing me being like, hey, Donald Trump was there. Yeah, Donald Trump was there. Doesn't mean shit. Anyway, based on reporting from Bloomberg, OpenAI plans to have 64,000 Blackwell GPUs running by the end of 2026, or roughly about $3.84 billion worth of them. I should also note that Bloomberg said that 16,000 of these chips will be operational by summer 2025, though it's unclear if that will actually happen. And as I'll get to later, I got some more questions about what exactly is happening at Stargate. All told, though it's unclear who actually pays what parts of Stargate, it's safe to assume that OpenAI will have to at least put a billion dollars into a project that is meant to be up and running by the end of 2026, if not more. As of now, Stargate really only has one like data center project under development. It's in Abilene, Texas, and as I've mentioned, it's not really clear how it's going, though a recent piece from the Information reported that it was currently empty and incomplete, and if it stays that way, and I quote again, OpenAI could walk away from the deal, which would cost Oracle billions of dollars, though the article takes great pains to assure the reader that that won't be likely. Even an inkling of such a possibility is a bad fucking sign. Business Insiders reporting on the site in Abilene calls it a $3.4 billion data center development, as did the press release from the developer Crusoe, who we'll get to later. Though these numbers don't include GPUs, hardware or the labor necessary to run them. Right now, Crusoe is, according to business, six new data centers, each with a minimum square footage, which will join the two it is already constructing for Oracle. Oracle assigned, according to the information, a 15 year long lease with Cruiser for its data centers, all of which will be rented to OpenAI. In any case, OpenAI's exposure could be much, much, much higher than the billion dollars, and I'll explain in greater depth how I reach the figure at the when I get there, but nevertheless, it could be much higher. If OpenAI has to contribute significantly to the costs of associating with Stargate in general, it could cost them a lot of money. Data centers aren't something you can do funny money math with. Data Center Dynamics reports that the Abilene site is meant to have 200 megawatts of compute capacity in the first half of 2025, and then as much as 1.2 gigawatts by mid-2026. To give you a sense of the total cost for the project, former Microsoft VP of Energy Brian Janus said in January that it cost $25 million a megawatt, or about $25 billion a gigawatt, meaning that the initial capital expenditures for Stargate to spin up its first 200 megaw center will be around $5 billion, spiraling to $30 billion or more for the entire project. The information is reported that the site, which could be, and I quote, potentially one of the biggest AI data centers, could cost $50 billion to $100 billion in the coming years. Where's that fucking money coming from? Assuming we stick with the lower end of these cost estimates, it's likely that OpenAI is on the hook for over $5 billion for the Abilene site, based on the $19 billion it's committed to the overall Stargate data center project. This expenditure won't come all at once and will be spread across several years. Still, assuming even the rosiest numbers, it's hard to see how OpenAI doesn't have to pony up at least a Billy in 2025. And that's likely because the development of this site is going to be heavily delayed by both tariffs, labor shortages, and Oracles, as reported by Information. Well, they're trusting, and this is the kind of quote you really want to hear, they're trusting scrappy but unproven startups to develop. The project is that good? Is that who you want doing this? I know when I get a contractor in to fix something, my first thought is is this guy scrappy? Anyway, let's talk about the other costs. They're at least 3.5 billion based on reporting from the information from last year, OpenAI will spend at least $2.5 billion across salaries, data referring to buying data from other companies, hosting and other costs of sales and sales and marketing, and then another billion on what infrastructure OpenAI owns. I expect the latter cost to balloon with OpenAI's investment in physical infrastructure for Stargate. Here's another bloody question. How does OpenAI meet its obligations? Based on previous estimates, OpenAI spends about $2.25 to make a buck. At that rate, it's likely that OpenAI's costs in its most rosy red revenue projections of $12.7 billion are at least 28 billion, meaning that it's on course to burn at least $14 billion in 2025 alone. Assuming that OpenAI has literally all of the money they have from last year. They don't. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend they have $10 billion as well as 10 billion from SoftBank. It's still unclear how they pay for everything now, while OpenAI likely has preferential payment structures with all of their vendors, such as discounted rates with Microsoft or Azure cloud services, it will eventually have to pay someone, especially in the case of costs related to Stargate, many of which are upfront and involve physical things happening in the event that its costs are as severe as reporting suggests. OpenAI's revenue comes at a terrible cost and will likely be immediately funneled directly into funding. The obscene costs behind inference and training models like GPT 4.5, which Sam Altman called a giant expensive model and yeah, nevertheless, he pushed that to every single user. Worse still, OpenAI has, while delaying its next model, GPT5, promised to launch, after all, its O3 reasoning model after saying it wouldn't do so. Which is strange because it turns out O3 is actually way more expensive to run than people thought with arcprice Foundation, a non profit that makes the ARK AGI tests for benchmarking models because real tests don't work on them. They need to make something out. Well, they're estimating that it will cost about 30 grand a task, which is that's a lot of money. And yes, they I get it. OpenAI has a new sugar daddy in the form of SoftBank. But SoftBank has to borrow money to meet its obligations for Stargate and also OpenAI. And this is leading to its financial condition likely deteriorating. And that's S and P Global that you know, you know the S&P5. Those people, those people said that that's not what you want to hear. Let's talk SoftBank. As of right now, SoftBank has committed to the following at least $30 billion in funding as part of OpenAI's recent $40 billion funding round. Now, SoftBank's filings surrounding OpenAI's funding also suggests that they are ultimately on the hook for the entire 40 billion, but they can syndicate. Like I mentioned earlier, reporting suggests that the syndication will happen and it will happen with people like Kachu, Microsoft and other investors. Now here's the funny part. If OpenAI fails to convert to a for profit, that $40 billion is slashed down to a paltry $30 billion. Although again, SoftBank's share is contingent upon whether it finds other investors to join the deal. Now there's another $3 billion that SoftBank's promised to spend on OpenAI's tech, and then $19 billion for the Stargate data center project, which SoftBank is taking full the information reports, and the total is either $52 billion or $62 billion, with at least $10 billion due by the end of 2025, but more like 20. Like there's so much money. To be clear, SoftBank had to borrow all of the $10 billion. How the fuck are they meant to get the $30 billion? Now I kind of mentioned S and P, but I want to really return to that. Now. SoftBank's exposure to OpenAI is materially harming the company, and I'm quoting the Wall Street Journal here. Ratings agency S and P Global said Tuesday that SoftBank's financial condition will likely deteriorate as a result of the OpenAI investment, and that its plans to add debt could lead the agency to consider downgrading SoftBank's ratings. While one might argue that SoftBank has a good amount of cash, the Journal also adds that they're somewhat hamstrung in its use as a result of CEO Masayoshi Son's dick shit reckless gambles. Again quoting from the Wall Street Journal, SoftBank had a decent buffer of $31 billion of cash as of December 31st. But the company has also pledged to hold much of that in reserve. To quell worried investors, SoftBank has committed to not borrow more than 25% of the value of its holdings, which means it will likely need to sell some of the other parts of its empire to pay the rest of the OpenAI deal. Worse still, it seems that as mentioned before, that SoftBank will be financing the entirety of the first 10 billion 7.5 billion if they're able to syndicate it. As a result, SoftBank is likely going to have to sell off parts of their actually valuable holdings in companies like Alibaba or arm, or worse still, steal parts of their ailing investments from a vision fund, resulting in a material loss in its underwater deals. This is an untenable strategy, and I'd like to explain why. First, OpenAI needs at least $40 billion a year to survive, and its costs are only increasing. While we don't have much transparency into OpenAI's actual day to day finances, we can make educated guesses that its costs are increasing based on the amount of capital it's raising. If OpenAI's costs were flat or only mildly increasing, we'd expect to see raises roughly the same size as the previous one, six point something. In that range, a $40 billion raise is nearly six times the previous funding round. Admittedly, multiples like that aren't particularly unusual. If A company raises 300 grand in the pre seed round and the $3 million Series A round in funding, that's a tenfold increase. But we're not talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars. We're talking about billions of dollars. If OpenAI's funding round with SoftBank goes as planned, it will raise the equivalent of the entire GDP of Estonia, a fairly wealthy country itself that's also a member the European Union. That alone should give you a sense of how fucking stupid this all is. Stupid, sure, but undoubtedly necessary. Per the information, OpenAI plans to spend as much as $28 billion in compute on Microsoft Azure Cloud in 2028. Over a third of OpenAI's revenue, per the same article, will come from SoftBank's alleged spend. It's reasonable to believe that OpenAI will as a result need to raise in excess of $40 billion a year, though it's reasonable to believe that it will need to raise more like 50 billion a year until they reach profitability. You know, never. This actually has a reason. It's due to the growing cost of doing business, as well as the various infrastructure commitments they've made, both in the terms of Stargate as well as deals with third party suppliers like Coreweave and indeed Microsoft. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's statement around costs also suggests that they're going up quite fiercely. In late February, he claimed that OpenAI was out of GPUs. While this suggests that there is some demand for some products, like its horrifying image generating tech that has made abominations that insult Miyazaki and I will hate them for it forever and thus made them go viral in March, it also means that to meet the demand of the horrible abominations, OpenAI needs to spend more. And at the risk of repeating myself, that demand doesn't necessarily translate into revenue or profitability now. Second, SoftBank cannot fund OpenAI long term. I must be clear, OpenAI's costs are projected to be $320 billion over the five years. SoftBank has to overcome significant challenges to fund both OpenAI and its part of Stargate. And when I say fund, I mean fund the current state of both projects, assuming no further obligations or complications. The information reports the OpenAI forecast that it will spend, as I mentioned, $28 billion on compute with Microsoft alone in 2028. And I apologize for repeating myself. These numbers fucking matter. The same article also reports that OpenAI would turn profitable by the end of the decade after building out Stargate, suggesting that OpenAI's operating expense will grow exponentially year over year. According to the information, it expects its costs to surpass $320 billion between 2025 and 2030, with half of that going towards funding model training and development. How the fuck does building Stargate make them profitable? I really can't. Anyway, it won't. It's the same shit. But SoftBank has had to and will continue having to go to remarkable lengths to fund OpenAI's current $40 billion round. Lengths so significant that it may lead to their credit rating being further downgraded. As I men mentioned, even if we assume the best case scenario, OpenAI successfully converts to a for profit entity by the end of 2025 and gets that full $30 billion. It seems unlikely, if not impossible for it to continue raising the amount of capital they need to to continue operations. As I've argued in multiple newsletters and podcasts, there are only a few entities that can provide the kind of funding that OpenAI needs. These include big tech focused investment firms like SoftBank, sovereign wealth funds like those of Saudi Arabia and the uae, and perhaps the largest tech companies. I also want to be clear that I keep getting messages being like the government could do it. Baila couldn't it get what if the government did it? It's not going to happen. Stop fucking asking me. It's just not going to happen. The government's not sending $40 billion to Sam Altman. They're not going to do it. I will apologize personally to each and every one of you if I'm wrong, but they will need to send $40 billion cash to OpenAI. But these entities can meet OpenAI's needs for some time, but not, not all the time. It's not realistic to expect SoftBank or Microsoft or the Sauds or Oracle or Whoever to provide $40 billion every year for the foreseeable future. And just to be clear, this is what OpenAI needs. Eventually, even the Sauds have to have a break. And I don't know if you remember from a previous episode, but Masayoshi Son gets a lot of his money from them and they're not happy with him. In fact, Masayoshi Son said a few years ago that he owed Mohammed Bin Salman. Not a great guy to owe anyway. This really is especially true for SoftBank, by the way. They're bruised, they're battered. After several rough years, including a failed multi billion dollar investment in WeWork based on its current promise to not borrow more than 25% of its holdings, it's near impossible that SoftBank will be able to continue to fund OpenAI at this rate. And $40 billion a year may not actually be enough. Based on SoftBank's last reported equity value of its holdings, they have about $229 billion of stuff, meaning that they can bor 57 billion while remaining compliant with these guidelines. In any case, it's unclear how SoftBank can fund OpenAI, but it's far clearer that nobody else is willing to.
- [28:40]
Will Pearson
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined, so whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844 iHeart to get started. That's 844-844, iHeart.
- [29:12]
Shannon Schuyler
Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.
- [29:20]
Ed Zitron
You don't know know what's true or not because you don't know if AI was involved in it.
- [29:25]
Shannon Schuyler
So my first reaction was haha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real and I think we will see a twitch streamer president maybe within our lifetimes. You can find close all tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [29:44]
Ed Zitron
Now I'm gonna move off the questions for a minute because I just want to get into some problems I've popped because it turns out that OpenAI they got doo doo ass. That's a professional finance term. I did just say finance and we're just going to keep that now OpenAI has started running into capacity issues and this is a real problem and it suggests material instability in their business or infrastructure and it's really not clear how OpenAI expands further. Let me explain. It's important to note that OpenAI does not really have any of its own compute infrastructure. The majority of its compute is provided by Microsoft. Though as mentioned previously previously, OpenAI now has a deal with Core Weave to take over the capacity that Microsoft was going to have $12 billion or so of capacity in the future anyway. In the last 90 days, Sam Altman has complained about the lack of GPUs and pressure on OpenAI servers many times. In my newsletter published a few days ago, I listed six such examples. Should you be curious, these statements in a bubble seem either harmless or like OpenAI's growth is skyrocketing. The latter of which might indeed be true, but bodes ill for a company that burns money with every single user. Any mention of rate limits or performance issues suggests that OpenAI is having significant capacity issues, and at this point it's unclear what further capacity it can actually expand to outside of that currently available. Samwon was complaining about melting GPUs. You've got the lead from Sora saying, yeah, we're going to have some problems showing you stuff for a minute just because like yeah, we're melting GPUs. There was a whole thing about how you should expect delays on product launches and service problems. None of it's really good. And like I said, it isn't really obvious how OpenAI is going to expand much further. Remember, Microsoft has now pulled as much as 2 gigawatts of data center projects, walked away from a billion dollar data center development in Ohio and declined the option. The one I just mentioned on $12 billion of compute from Core Weave that OpenAI had to pick up, meaning that OpenAI may be pushing up against the limits of what is physically available, while the total available capacity of GPUs at many providers like Lambda and Crusoe is unknown. And indeed I don't know if Crusoe has a single data center at this point, we know that Coreweave has approximately 360 megawatts available, compared to Microsoft's 6.5 to 7.5 gigawatts, a large chunk of which I think powers OpenAI. If OpenAI is running into capacity issues, it could be one of the following they could be running up against the limit of what Microsoft has available is willing to offer the company. The information reported in October 2024 that OpenAI was frustrated with Microsoft and said it wasn't moving fast enough to supply OpenAI with servers. And now it could also be that while OpenAI's capacity is sufficient, it does not have the resources available to easily handle bursts in user growth in a stable manner. Per the Information's reporting, Microsoft promised OpenAI 300,000 Nvidia GB200 Blackwell chips by the end of 2025, a roughly $18 billion worth of them. It's unclear if this has changed since Microsoft allowed OpenAI to seek other comp companies in late January 2025. I also don't believe that OpenAI has any other viable options for existing compute infrastructure outside of Microsoft Core WEEB's current data centers mostly feature Nvidia's aging Hopper GPUs, and while it could and likely is retrofitting its current infrastructure with Blackwell chips, doing so isn't easy or cheap. Blackwell chips require far more powerful cooling and server infrastructure to make them run smoothly, a problem which led to a delay in their delivery to most customers, according to the Information. And even if Core Weave was able to replace every last Hopper GPU with a blackW, and they won't, it still wouldn't match what OpenAI needs to expand. One might argue that it simply needs to wait for the construction of the Stargate data center or for Core Weave to finish the gigawatt or so of construction it's working on. I want to be clear how impossible that is. I need to be clear. One of my least favorite responses to my work is people saying they'll just build more data centers. They'll just go and build them, man. They're just going to build them right now. They won't. You can't just Data centers don't just grow from the fucking ground, as I've argued in the past. I have serious concerns over the viability of Coreweave ever completing its alleged contracted 1.3 gigawatts of capacity. Based on calculations, it'll have to spend in excess of $39 billion to build it. It's unclear how that'll happen, and it doesn't have the money to do so, like it actually does not have the cash. I'll get into that later. But they don't have the money. However, even if I were to humor this idea, it's impossible that any of this project is done by the end of 2025. And I'd argue even in I can find no commitments to any time scale, other than the fact that OpenAI will allegedly start paying CoreWeave in October, per the information, which could very well be using their current capacity. I also can't find any evidence that Crusoe, the company building the Stargate data center in Texas, has any compute anywhere else. Lambda, a GPU compute company that raised $320 million earlier in the year, and according to Data Center Dynamics, operates out of colocation data centers in San Francisco, California and Allen, Texas, and is backed by more than 820 million in funds raised this year. All of that just kind of doesn't say that they have a data center at all. A CO location. That means you're in someone else's, buddy. You don't own a house, you're renting one. And just to be clear, OpenAI's ability to scale is entirely contingent on the availability of whatever data center providers it has relationships with. And all of the growth's coming from these two. These two companies. I'll get there, don't worry. But every time I kind of say this stuff out loud, I. I feel my soul slightly stripped from me. I feel like I'm. I'm. I feel like I'm in hell. Because this is an insane thing. If you or I went to someone and went like, hey, look, I'm gonna lose $5 billion, but I promise you, God will come out of the computer. They'd institutionalize you or me. They definitely would institutionalize me. It's just fucking stupid. But in any case, this means that OpenAI's only real choice for GPUs is either core Weave or Microsoft. And while it's hard to calculate precisely, OpenAI's best case scenario is that 16,000 GPUs come online in the summer of 2025 as part of the Stargate data center project. And that's a drop in the bucket compared to the 300,000 of the fucking things that Microsoft have previously promised. Now, one last thing. Any capacity or expansion issues that happen with OpenAI will kneecap this company. OpenAI is, regardless of how you or I may feel about Generative AI, one of the fastest growing companies of all, currently has, according to its own statements over 500 million weekly active users. Putting aside that each user is unprofitable, such remarkable growth, especially as it's partially as a result of its extremely resource intensive image generator, is a massive horrifying strain on their infrastructure. The vast majority of OpenAI's users are free customers using ChatGPT, with only, like I mentioned earlier, 20 million paying subscribers and the vast majority of them on the cheapest 20 buck plan. OpenAI's services, even in the case of image generation, are relatively commoditized, meaning that users can, if they really care, go and use any number of other large language model services. They could use Bing, they could use Stable Diffusion, they could even use Grok if they really I don't like saying it, but free users, they're a burden on the company, especially with such piss poor conversion rates losing it money with each prompt. Which is by the way also also case with paying subscribers and the remarkable popularity of its horrible image generator. It only threatens to bring more burdensome one off customers that will generate a few abominable studio Ghibli pictures of Garfield with giant knockers and then never return. If OpenAI's growth continues at this rate, it will run into capacity issues and it does not have much room to expand. While we don't know how much capacity they're taking up with Microsoft, or indeed whether Microsoft is approaching capacity or otherwise limiting them, we do know that OpenAI has seen reason to beg for access for more GPUs. In simpler terms, even if OpenAI wasn't running out of money, even if OpenAI wasn't horrifyingly unprofitable, it also may not have enough GPUs to continue providing its services in a reliable manner. If that's the case, there really isn't that much that can be done other than significantly limiting free users activity on the platform, which is OpenAI's primary mechanism for revenue growth and customer acquisition. Limiting activity or changing the economics behind its paid product, and this is quoting Sam Alban, they could potentially find some way to let people pay for compute they want to use more dynamically. That's not good. Orman's come up with some other ideas, like an idea for paid plans on March 4th where 20 bucks a month goes to credits which you can use across features like deep research 0, 1 GPT, 4.5 soar, and so on with no fixed limits per feature and you choose what you want. If you run out of credits you can buy more. I just want to be clear that that is a terrible fucking deal. We have no idea what the credits would be and it would definitely be rigged so that you would have to buy more. He's also brought up things like mentioning losing 200 bucks a month on the Pro subscription, but here's a funny one. Buried in an article from the information from March 5th is a comment that suggests that OpenAI is considering measures like changing its pricing model entirely, with Altman reportedly telling developers in London in February 2025 that OpenAI is primed to judge 20 or 30% of pro customers a higher price price because of how many research queries they're doing. But he suggested an a la carte or pay as you go approach. When it comes to agents, though, we have to charge more than $200 a month. Fucking just this fucking guy. The problem is that with all of these measures, even if they succeeded in generating more money for the company, also need to reduce the burden on OpenAI's available infrastructure. Remember, remember, data centers can take three to six years to build, and even with Stargate's accelerated and I'd argue unrealistic timelines, OpenAI isn't unlocking a tenth of the promised compute that Microsoft gave them. 300,000 GPUs is a lot. 16,000 really not. So what might these capacities look like? What are the consequences? You love pale horses? I love pale horses. Let's get riding. Though downtime might be an obvious choice, capacity issues at OpenAI will likely manifest in hard limits on what free users can do, some of which I've documented previously. Nevertheless, I believe the real pale horses of capacity issues come from arbitrary limits on any given user groove, meaning both free users and paid users. Some limits on what a user can do, a reduction in the number of generation of images for paid users, any introduction of peak hours, or any increases in prices are a sign that OpenAI is running out of GPUs, which it's already said is happening publicly. However, the really obvious thing, the real obvious pale horse, would be service degradation, delays in generations of any kind, 500 status code errors or ChatGPT just failing to produce an answer. OpenAI has up until this point, had fairly impressive uptime time. Still, if it's running up against a wall, this streak will end. The consequences depend on how often these issues occur and to whom they occur. If free users face service degradation, they'll bounce off the product, as their use is likely far more fleeting than the paid user, which will begin to erode OpenAI's growth. Ironically, rapid and especially unprecedented growth in one of OpenAI's competitors like Xanthropic could also represent a pale horse for OpenAI that so based on the monthly active users I've seen from Anthropic, I don't think that's going to be a problem. Now. If paid users face service degradation, it will likely cause the most harm to the company as while paid users still lose OpenAI money, in the end, at least they receive some money. OpenAI is effectively one choice here. Get more GPUs from Microsoft and really its future depends heavily on both Microsoft's generosity and there being enough of them at a time when Microsoft has pulled back from over 2 gigawatts of data centers. Specifically according to TD Cohen, because of it moving away from providing compute to OpenAI. Now, admittedly OpenAI has previously spent more on training models than inference, and that's the actual running of them, and the company might be able to smooth down time issues by shifting capacity. This would of course have a knock on effect on its ability to develop new models, and the company is already losing ground, particularly when it comes to Chinese rivals like Deep Seek. Now I know this has been a long episode and the fact is I'm not even close to finish. I have some more tough, tough questions and tough problems for opening. Tune in to the next episode to hear them. I realize this has been a lot and I know you're very patient with me, you let me read my long scripts. But this stuff is important. It's important to me and I think you're gonna find it important too. And I'll have a nice sexy conclusion to this at the end of the next one. But before I go, please vote for me in the Webbies. I wanna win. It's my pinned post on Blue sky and Twitter. My handles edit tron.com and blue blue Sky. Please vote for me in the Webbies. Anyway, catch you next episode. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects@matosauski.com M A T T O S O WSKI. You can email me at ezeteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat where's your Ed? To visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.
- [43:14]
Shannon Schuyler
Wherever you get your podcasts.
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Morgan Sung
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- [44:35]
Will Pearson
A world of economic uncertainty and workplace transformation. Learn to lead by example from visionary C SU executives like Shannon Schuyler of PwC and Will Pearson of iHeartMedia, the.
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Ed Zitron
Good teacher explains the great Teacher inspires. Don't always leave your team to do the work that's been the most important part of how to lead by example.
- [44:59]
Will Pearson
Listen to Leading by Example executives making.
- [45:02]
Morgan Sung
An impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.
- [45:04]
Will Pearson
Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [45:10]
Shannon Schuyler
Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from kqed where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.
- [45:18]
Ed Zitron
You don't know what's true or not because you don't know if AI was involved in it.
- [45:23]
Shannon Schuyler
So my first reaction was haha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real?
- [45:30]
Ed Zitron
And I think we will see a.
- [45:31]
Shannon Schuyler
Twitch streamer president maybe within our lifetimes. You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts.