“Based on my own reporting, which has been ignored (I guess it’s easier to do that than think about it?) by much of the press, OpenAI made $4.33bn through the end of September, and spent $8.67bn on inference in that period.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Through the end of September 2025, OpenAI made $4.33bn in revenue and spent $8.67bn on inference.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, The AI Bubble Is An Information War, paragraph 17.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-the-ai-bubble-is-an-information-war-a294c3-a1
We recorded 38 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 2026-03-03. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
Conditions
- based on his own reporting (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
From the speaker
- Based on my own reporting
- OpenAI made $4.33bn through the end of September
- spent $8.67bn on inference in that period
Our interpretation
- The surrounding discussion identifies the year as 2025. The period is January through September, inclusive.
- Made means realized company revenue. Inference spending excludes training and other operating expenses.
- These are reporting-based estimates, not explicitly GAAP figures. Each amount must be verified separately.
- Based on my own reporting describes the source of the assertion; it is not a conditional antecedent.
Counts as supported if: Independent records establish January–September 2025 revenue of $4.33 billion and inference expenditure of $8.67 billion, allowing rounding to the stated precision.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable records establish a materially different amount for either component. A different reporting period, annualized revenue, or a different expense category cannot supply the contradiction.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
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
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The available evidence does not independently establish either nine-month total. TechCrunch's separate reporting identifies a problem with deriving total revenue from Microsoft's net revenue-sharing receipts. Its inference figures repeat Zitron's analysis. This weakens the claimed calculation but does not establish alternative, comparable totals.
Limitations
- The independently sourced accounting explanation relies on an unnamed source.
- Six-month and full-year figures cannot substitute for the specified nine-month figures.
Evidence (1 item)
Context only: TechCrunch,
Microsoft’s net revenue share
Why it matters here: TechCrunch independently reports that the payments underlying the revenue inference were net of reciprocal payments. They therefore cannot establish OpenAI's total revenue through simple division; the article does not independently verify inference expenditure.
- Publisher
- TechCrunch
- Kind of source
- News report
- Measures
- Microsoft, Net revenue-sharing payments from OpenAI, USD millions, estimate, 2025-01-01 to 2025-09-30
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
Financial records or independently corroborated reporting giving both January–September 2025 totals and explaining revenue-sharing and inference-expense accounting.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, The AI Bubble Is An Information War
Based on my own reporting, which has been ignored (I guess it’s easier to do that than think about it?) by much of the press, OpenAI made $4.33bn through the end of September, and spent $8.67bn on inference in that period.
- Where
- paragraph 17
- Published
- 2026-03-03
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-the-ai-bubble-is-an-information-war-a294c3-a1: 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.
About assessment wyea-the-ai-bubble-is-an-information-war-a294c3-a1.