OpenAI is in Deep Trouble

Where OpenAI is Now

They still have the brand name, a lot of data and tons of (mostly unpaid) users, but:

• GPT 4.5 is hugely expensive.

• Even so it offers no decisive advantage over competitors; there is basically zero moat.

• Scaling hasn’t gotten them —or anyone else — to AGI.

• OpenAI’s GPT-5 project thus far has been a failure; there is already starting to be an “is that all they have got reaction?” to GPT 4.5, as illustrated in the brutal early reviews.

• DeepSeek led to a price war that cuts potential profits.

• There is still no killer app with a clear business model.

• OpenAI is likely still losing money on every prompt.

• A bunch of investment turns to debt if they can’t make the transition to nonprofit fast enough, and Elon has perhaps upped the cost.

• Many many top people have left (Sutskever, Murati, Schulman, recently, Amodei and Karpathy before, etc and many, many more).

• Some have started serious competitors with similar IP.

• Because OpenAI’s burn rate is so high (perhaps on the order of a couple billion dollars a month), they have limited runway, even after last year’s massive financing.

• Microsoft no longer fully has their back.

• Altman’s credibility has diminished.

• Sora went nowhere; Google’s Veo2 is probably better.

• Whatever lead OpenAI had two years ago has been squandered.