Why would the debt matter when you have $60 billion in ad revenue and are generating $20 billion in op income? That's OpenAI 5-7 years from now, if they're able to maintain their position with consumers. Once they attach an ad product their margins will rapidly soar due to the comparatively low cost of the ad segment.
The technology is closer to a decade from seeing a plateau for the large general models. GPT o3 is significantly beyond o1 (much less 3.5 which was just Nov 2022). Claude 4 is significantly beyond 3.5. They're not subtle improvements. And most likely there will be a splintering of specialization that will see huge leaps outside the large general models. The radical leap in coding capabilities over the past 12-18 months is just an early example of how that will work, and it will affect every segment of human endeavour.
> Once they attach an ad product their margins will rapidly soar due to the comparatively low cost of the ad segment.
They're burning through computers and capital. No amount of advertising could cover the cost of training or even running these models. The massive subscription costs we've started seeing are just a small glimpse into the money they are burning through.
They will NOT make a profit using the current methods unless the models become at least 10 times more efficient than they are now. At which point can Europe adapt to the innovation without much cost.
It's an arms race to see who can burn the most money the fastest, while selling the result for as little as possible. When they need to start making money, it will all come crashing down.
You're describing Google Gemini on any Android phone, that's today, sans the ads.