“I cannot and will not speak to the financial health of OpenAI in this piece, but I will say this: these numbers are materially different to what has been reported, and the significance of OpenAI’s inference spend alone makes me wonder about the larger cost picture for generative AI.”
Our reading:
The inference-spend and implied-revenue numbers from the documents Zitron viewed are materially different from what has been reported, and OpenAI's inference spend makes him wonder about the larger cost picture for generative AI.
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
The Decoder describes the revenue-share payments for 2024 and January–September 2025 as net of Microsoft's payments back to OpenAI [e1]. Dividing these amounts by 20% gives revenue lower bounds, which cannot establish a discrepancy with reported total revenue [e1]. The report attributes the inference expenses to Zitron, so those figures do not provide independent confirmation of the claimed spending discrepancy [e1]. Neither comparison settles whether comparable financial figures differed materially [e1].
Caveats
- The packet does not independently authenticate the underlying document figures.
- The netting explanation is secondary reporting. The amounts needed to derive total revenue are unavailable.
- The evidence does not reconcile inference expenses with earlier reports using matching periods, definitions, and treatment of projections.
Evidence (1 item)
Context only: The Decoder,
net share
Why it matters: This summarizes TechCrunch's separately sourced accounting explanation for the payments through Q3. A net payment does not establish total revenue simply by dividing it by the revenue-share rate.
- Publisher
- The Decoder
- Kind of source
- Secondary summary
- Measures
- OpenAI, Net revenue-sharing payments to Microsoft, USD billions, estimate, 2024-01-01 to 2025-09-30
- About events on
- Published
How we judged it
- Kind of claim
- Observation
- Deadline
- None given. We don’t add one.
Conditions
- he cannot and will not speak to the financial health of OpenAI in this piece (their words)
- makes me wonder (their words)
Where we had to interpret
- Assess the factual assertion about differences in inference spending and implied revenue for calendar 2024 through Q3 2025.
- The ordinary substantive reading is that comparable financial figures differ enough to change the financial picture, not merely that differently defined numbers are numerically unequal.
- No arbitrary materiality percentage is imposed.
- The financial-health disclaimer and personal wondering are not separate predictions.
- A revenue lower bound must not be treated as a complete revenue total.
Right if: Authenticated document figures and earlier published figures show substantial discrepancies for the same periods and financial measures.
Wrong if: Authenticated figures agree on a comparable basis, or the apparent discrepancies disappear after accounting for definitions, netting, scope, and projection versus actual results.
We wrote this test after the outcome was known.
What would settle it
Authenticated document figures or independent verification of their contents, alongside the earlier reports and enough accounting detail to compare matching measures and periods. Revenue-share netting must be reconciled to compare total revenue with total revenue, and inference comparisons must distinguish projections from realized expenses.
We found 11 claims in this post. See them all.
Full record
Source and dates
Where's Your Ed At, Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft, paragraph 92.
- 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 2025-11-12.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the posts we read.
: Where's Your Ed At, Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
I cannot and will not speak to the financial health of OpenAI in this piece, but I will say this: these numbers are materially different to what has been reported, and the significance of OpenAI’s inference spend alone makes me wonder about the larger cost picture for generative AI.
- Where
- paragraph 92
- Published
- 2025-11-12
- 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: a cited source didn’t say what the write-up said.