“Both OpenAI and Anthropic are astonishingly bad businesses, losing $20.92 billion and $8 billion respectively in 2025.”
Our reading:
OpenAI and Anthropic lost $20.92 billion and $8 billion respectively in 2025 and are astonishingly bad businesses.
Assessment: Unresolved
What happened
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
We checked, and the evidence so far doesn’t settle it.
Judged on a plain reading. They named no measure, so we used the reading a typical informed reader would take. It is spelled out under “How we judged it”.
Evidence up to . Checked .
Why
Ars Technica reports OpenAI's calendar-2025 operating loss as $20.92 billion and its headline net loss as nearly $39 billion [e1]. CTech/Reuters reports Anthropic's 2025 operating loss as $8.06 billion, which rounds to $8 billion [e2]. Both claimed amounts match reported operating losses at the stated precision [e1, e2]. These items do not establish the amounts as a matching pair of net losses on a consistent accounting basis [e1, e2]. The figures therefore support an operating-loss reading but cannot settle the unspecified loss measure [e1, e2].
Caveats
- The claim does not specify operating loss versus net loss or an accounting basis.
- No original OpenAI annual financial statement was retrieved to reconcile consolidated and attributable net losses.
- The cited evidence items do not supply Anthropic's 2025 net loss.
- The loss figures cannot settle the subjective description of the companies as 'astonishingly bad businesses'.
Evidence (2 items)
Context only: Ars Technica,
nearly $39 billion in 2025
Why it matters: The report separately identifies $20.92 billion as loss from operations and a much larger headline net loss. It establishes why substituting one metric for the other would change the verdict.
- Publisher
- Ars Technica
- Kind of source
- News report, audited
- Measures
- OpenAI, Reported headline net loss, USD billions, company reported, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31
- About events on
- Published
Context only: CTech and Reuters,
operating loss reached $8.06 billion in 2025
Why it matters: Anthropic's operating loss rounds to the claimed $8 billion. This supports that possible interpretation but cannot establish an unspecified net-loss figure.
- Publisher
- CTech and Reuters
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- Anthropic, Operating loss, USD billions, company reported, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31
- About events on
- Published
How we judged it
- Kind of claim
- Observation
- Deadline
- None given. We don’t add one.
Where we had to interpret
- Assess the financial amounts separately from the subjective judgment about business quality.
- Unqualified annual loss ordinarily means net loss, but operating loss is a material alternative reading that must be checked rather than silently substituted.
- Use calendar 2025 and US dollars. Treat $8 billion as rounded to the nearest billion and $20.92 billion as rounded to the nearest hundredth of a billion.
- The quoted assertion does not specify an accounting basis. Finding numbers that resemble operating losses does not authorize assigning that metric to an unqualified claim.
Right if: Independent financial records establish the respective 2025 losses at the stated precision on a specified, matching metric and accounting basis.
Wrong if: Independent records establish different losses beyond the stated rounding tolerances on the same specified metric and accounting basis. Differences between operating and net loss alone cannot settle an unspecified metric.
We wrote this test after the outcome was known.
What would settle it
Clarification of the claimed loss metric and accounting basis, followed by both companies' calendar-2025 financial statements or independent reporting based on those records. The comparison must distinguish consolidated and attributable losses, identify adjustments, and apply the stated rounding precision. The business-quality judgment remains subjective.
We found 42 claims in this post. See them all.
Full record
Source and dates
Where's Your Ed At, Credit Crunch, paragraph 113.
- Said
- We read the source
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence up to
- Checked
We read this wording on 2026-10-28. The post may have been edited after 2026-10-06.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the posts we read.
: Where's Your Ed At, Credit Crunch
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are astonishingly bad businesses, losing $20.92 billion and $8 billion respectively in 2025.
- Where
- paragraph 113
- Published
- 2026-10-06
- We read it
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Versions
- Current: Unresolved. Evidence up to 2026-10-28.
What happened to this record
PublishedBy us
Published after both AI reviews and the final check passed.
Held backBy us
The final check failed: the write-up said more than the evidence showed.