[pasquinelli]

> A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain.

people also tend to sheild their sacred cows with gestures toward nuance. maybe i'm misreading you, but it sounds like your criticism of him is he has correctly identified a problem and is reporting on it, but he hasn't taken the next step of predicting the next twenty years of consequences. sounds to me like a reporter doing his job well.

[ElProlactin]

A reporter doing his job well (in this context) would understand that using non-cash accounting events to make hyperbolic posts about cash burn is simply not honest.

I don't have a problem with skepticism around AI investments (I agree with a lot of the skepticism) but if you're going to make public arguments about these investments, you should have a grasp of basic accounting principles.

[pasquinelli]

can you go a little more into that? i myself am not an accountant; what is zitron being dishonest about?

[ElProlactin]

https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

> Exclusive: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

Start with the headline. He's comparing the net losses between 2024 and 2025, but $41.55 billion of the 2025 loss is a non-cash charge from "changes in fair value of convertible interests and warrant liability" tied to the for-profit conversion. He notes this but doesn't actually seem to understand (or want to explain) what that means.

It's a non-cash charge. This is not money actually going out. It's not an operating loss.

He could have used the increase in operating loss or expenditures to make his point, but he basically chose the biggest number he could find and present it in a way that distorts what it is. The only two possibilities seem to be that he is trying to be bombastic ("8X") or he actually doesn't understand what he's looking at.

> It then marked $3.74 billion of losses as “net loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital,” leaving the net loss attributable to the company as $5.09 billion.

> It’s unclear what this means, nor how OpenAI reconciled the removal of $3.74 billion in costs.

This is so strange because it's basic consolidation accounting: allocating a share of losses to minority equity holders. There's nothing sinister about it, and it's not anything that's being hidden. This is a standard practice for companies and anyone who is positioning himself as having the requisite expertise to comment about the financials of AI companies (or any companies for that matter) should know this basic accounting and an absolute nothingburger.

There are other aspects of his writing that are pretty distorted. Like, he states "I’m not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustainability or profitability" while ignoring that OpenAI actually improved its gross margin from around 28% to 43%. Whether it ever becomes sustainably profitable is still a big question mark but again, someone acting as a financial commentator should know this stuff. So he's either feigning ignorance to sell his narrative (and newsletter subscriptions), or he's really ignorant.