“At the current cost of revenue, it will cost OpenAI more than $27 billion to hit that revenue target.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
At the current cost of revenue, it will cost OpenAI more than $27 billion to reach $11.6 billion in revenue by the end of 2025.
Assessment: Unresolved Deadline passed on 2026-10-29 Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, OpenAI Is A Bad Business, paragraph 18.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-oai-business-18d940-a2
We recorded 46 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2024-10-02. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Conditional forecast
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- “by the end of 2025”
- Deadline state when assessed
- Deadline passed
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- Deadline passed (the release’s reference date)
Conditions
- at the current cost of revenue (antecedent, stated by the speaker)
- to hit the $11.6 billion revenue target (antecedent, stated by the speaker)
From the speaker
- At the current cost of revenue
- more than $27 billion
- $11.6 billion of revenue
- by the end of 2025
Our interpretation
- Read this as a conditional projection using the surrounding $2.35 of spending per dollar of revenue.
- In context, cost of revenue means the broader spending measure used to infer that ratio, not necessarily the accounting line called cost of revenue.
- The forecast requires both reaching the revenue target and retaining a comparable cost-to-revenue relationship. The multiplication alone does not demonstrate those conditions occurred.
- Use calendar-year realized revenue rather than an annualized revenue run rate.
Counts as supported if: If both conditions occurred, comparable 2025 expenses associated with reaching the revenue target exceeded $27 billion.
Counts as contradicted if: If both conditions occurred, comparable expenses associated with reaching the revenue target were no more than $27 billion.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Did the forecast come true?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- Deadline passed
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
CNBC's September 27, 2024 estimates imply about $27.28 billion in expenses at $11.6 billion in revenue if the estimated spending ratio remains fixed [e1]. The Financial Times reported on June 15, 2026 that OpenAI recorded about $13 billion in revenue and $34 billion in spending during 2025 [e2]. The revenue target was exceeded, but these reports do not establish that the assumed cost ratio persisted on a comparable expense basis [e1, e2]. The conditional forecast remains unresolved.
Limitations
- The hypothetical calculation does not establish actual 2025 expenses.
- The original estimates, later spending figures and losses adjusted for non-cash expenses are not reconciled.
- Annual totals do not establish expenses incurred when revenue reached $11.6 billion.
Evidence (2 items)
Supports the claim: Financial Times, republished by Yahoo Finance,
OpenAI booked about $13bn in revenue last year.
Why it matters here: Reported realized revenue exceeded the target. This establishes the revenue component of the antecedent, but not the unchanged cost ratio.
- Publisher
- Financial Times, republished by Yahoo Finance
- Kind of source
- News report, audited
- Measures
- OpenAI, Annual revenue, USD billions of dollars, company reported, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: CNBC,
expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year
Why it matters here: These projections explain the baseline calculation. The derived amount is hypothetical and does not establish actual 2025 expenses or persistence of the ratio.
- Publisher
- CNBC
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- OpenAI, Projected annual losses, USD billions of dollars, estimate, 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31
- Arithmetic
- Implied scenario expenses = ((3.7 + 5) / 3.7) × 11.6 = 27.2756756757 billion USD, assuming losses equal expenses minus revenue on the stated basis. (inputs: CNBC: projected 2024 revenue of $3.7 billion; CNBC: projected 2024 losses of $5 billion; Claim's stipulated 2025 revenue target of $11.6 billion; Approximately $27.28 billion; the input estimates are themselves rounded.)
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
A reconciliation of realized 2025 revenue and expenses to the original estimate's accounting basis and exclusions, establishing whether the assumed cost ratio persisted and the comparable expenses associated with reaching the revenue target.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, OpenAI Is A Bad Business
At the current cost of revenue, it will cost OpenAI more than $27 billion to hit that revenue target.
- Where
- paragraph 18
- Published
- 2024-10-02
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-oai-business-18d940-a2: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.