Openai’s hidden cost

Openai is the undisputed paste child of the Amnesty International Revolution, the company that forced the world to pay attention with the launch of Chatgpt. But behind the scenes, it has become a largely desperate and expensive battle, and the cost of maintaining the company’s geniuses at home.

According to a recent report from InformationOpenai revealed to investors that its stock -based compensation for employees rose more than five times last year to $ 4.4 billion. This number is not only large; It is more than the company’s fully revenue for this year, as it represents 119 % of its total revenue of $ 3.7 billion.

This is an unhealthy character, even for the silicon valley. For comparison, Google’s shares compensation was only 16 % of its revenues in the year before the public subscription. On Facebook, it was 6 %.

So what is happening? In short, Openai is fighting for her life in an unprecedented talent war, and her main rival, Meta, is on the attack. Mark Zuckerberg personally performs the trial of Amnesty International researchers through huge compensation packages, as he succeeded in overfishing many main minds of the basic teams in Openai. According to what was mentioned, this is a crisis in Openai, which forced her to “re -calibrate compensation” and promised more bonus salaries to prevent catastrophic brain migration.

While the stock -based compensation does not burn immediately through the company’s cash reserves, it creates great risks by reducing the value of the shares kept by investors. Every billion dollars of shares that are delivered to employees means the cake slices owned by the main supporters such as Microsoft and other investment capital companies are smaller.

Openai tries to sell this strategy as a long -term vision. The company offers that these huge expenses will decrease to 45 % of revenues this year, and less than 10 % by 2030. Moreover, Openai has discussed a future plan as its employees combined owned nearly a third of the company that is restructured, with Microsoft also owned another third. The goal is to convert employees into investor partners deeply with a tremendous incentive to stay and build.

But the “effective effect” is a key to a key in these elegant projections. Unforcing fishing and wage bumps means that Openai’s costs are likely to remain high in the sky.

Openai

This high -risk financial strategy places Openai in an unstable position. The company already spends billions of dollars annually because it is highly spent on the power of computing needed to operate its models. Adding additional billions in stock compensation puts huge pressure on the company to significantly increase revenues and find a way to profit before its investors are exposed.

While Microsoft seems to be closed in long distances, other investors may turn to beating their ownership severely. It compels the countdown timer to the company to provide a huge financial return to justify the cost.

Openai was founded with a task for building artificial public intelligence (AGI) that “benefits all humanity”. This expensive talent war, which is fed by capitalist competition, puts huge pressure on this founding ideal. It becomes difficult to determine the priorities of safety and ethics when you burn billions to prevent your highest mind from joining the competition.

Ultimately, Openai is betting on these billions to ensure that he has the best talent to win the race to create the first real experts in the world. If they succeed, the financial cost will look trivial. If they fail, or if the competitor arrives there first, they will spend themselves in a hole for nothing.

Openai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.