“OpenAI and Anthropic are both burning billions of dollars a year, and do not appear to have found a way to stop doing so.”
Our reading:
OpenAI and Anthropic are both burning billions of dollars a year and do not appear to have found a way to stop doing so.
Assessment: Can’t be checked
What happened
Not graded on evidence
Outcome: Can’t be checked
An opinion, a recommendation, or too vague to test. Listed, not scored.
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
The financial clause is checkable, and contemporary reports are consistent with its broad description: OpenAI projected roughly $5 billion of losses, while Anthropic reportedly burned $5.6 billion. But the combined claim also says the companies 'do not appear' to have found a way to stop. That is a qualified appraisal without a stated test. Anthropic's reported 2027 forecast is relevant, and Zitron acknowledged it. Its existence does not automatically refute his doubt; its uncertainty does not establish that doubt as fact. Scoring the entire statement would require replacing his qualification with an evaluator's threshold.
Caveats
- This is not a finding that the numerical financial clause is false.
- The cited contemporary reports distinguish projected losses from reported cash burn.
- News reporting is used because the underlying contemporary financial documents were not available in the readable sources.
- No forecast of permanent losses or future failure is attributed to the speaker.
Evidence (3 items)
Claims like this aren’t scored, so there is no evidence to show.
How we judged it
- Kind of claim
- Observation
- Deadline
- None given. We don’t add one.
Conditions
- do not appear (their words)
Where we had to interpret
- The numerical clause is a checkable historical observation. I read 'billions' as at least $2 billion annually for each company separately.
- I use calendar 2024, the latest completed annual period before publication, for the numerical clause. The surrounding discussion explicitly concerns 2024 figures.
- The context uses 'burning' broadly for financial losses, including noncash costs. It does not consistently mean cash burn as measured in a cash-flow statement.
- The second clause expresses a qualified impression as of February 17, 2025. It does not assert that neither company has a plan, that neither can become profitable, or that losses will continue until a particular deadline.
- The speaker supplies no objective threshold for 'appear to have found a way'. Requiring a demonstrated sustainable route would strengthen his words. Treating a management forecast as automatically refuting them would also remove the qualification.
- Because the supplied claim combines a checkable financial observation with that unscorable appraisal, I do not assign a binary verdict to the whole statement.
We don’t grade claims like this. We only check the quote and who said it.
What would settle it
Assess the numerical clause separately, with each company's financial measure specified. The qualified appraisal requires clarification of what the speaker meant by 'appear to have found a way'; later profitability alone cannot settle that historical impression.
We found 31 claims in this post. See them all.
Full record
Source and dates
Where's Your Ed At, The Generative AI Con, paragraph 35.
- 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 2025-02-17.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the posts we read.
: Where's Your Ed At, The Generative AI Con
OpenAI and Anthropic are both burning billions of dollars a year, and do not appear to have found a way to stop doing so.
- Where
- paragraph 35
- Published
- 2025-02-17
- We read it
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Versions
- Current: Can’t be checked. 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
A reviewer said our test wasn’t fair to what was actually said.