The open secret about OpenAI is that it’s hemorrhaging money. Not like an overly cocky poker player in Vegas. More like Elon Musk accidentally purchasing companies.
AI is a long-term bet, as the infrastructure to handle billions of prompts per day is still being built. The company doesn’t think it will start turning a profit til 2029. In the meantime, it’s projecting it will lose $14B this year.
In short, it needs money. And this week, it got some good and bad news on that front.
The good news: Amazon is reportedly interested in pouring up to $50B into the company, half of OpenAI’s total target. (SoftBank, which already has a stake in the company, is considering pitching in another $30B.)
The bad news: Nvidia is reportedly rethinking a memorandum of understanding to invest $100B in OpenAI. The plan was for the behemoth chipmaker to help the ChatGPT creator build up its computing power—and subsidize the costs.
And that’s not all! The Wall Street Journal also reports that OpenAI is looking to go public by the end of the year, which brings more investors into the mix.
The company can use the money to push its products, and it’s been very active on that front. Between December 12 and January 28, it registered five launches on Product Hunt:
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GPT-5.2, its most recent frontier model for ChatGPT, which came after a push to retake the lead from Google and Anthropic
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ChatGPT Images, which turns prompts into pictures
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FrontierScience, a benchmark to tell how well it does scientific reasoning
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ChatGPT Health, which doesn’t give medical advice…but kinda sorta gives medical advice
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Prism, a collaborative workspace for scientists that launched this week.
Obviously, OpenAI has competitors, some of whom had their own launches this week:
Which means: There’s more money to be raised…and spent.