OpenAI Might Not Duck Bankruptcy

#26DaysOfOpenAIDuckingBk

5, 13 and 15 of November

– George Noble’s post warns of OpenAI’s imminent collapse due to escalating losses exceeding $14 billion in 2026, declining ChatGPT traffic (down 22% post-Gemini 3 launch), and underwhelming GPT-5 rollout in August 2025, which prompted quick reversion to GPT-4o amid user backlash over reduced capabilities in math and reasoning.

– Financial strains are corroborated by Deutsche Bank’s projection of $143 billion in cumulative losses before profitability, with Sora’s daily costs at $15 million, while talent departures like Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever persist, though some ex-employees recently returned from startups, and Greg Brockman remains president contrary to the post’s claim.

– Elon Musk’s lawsuit, seeking up to $134 billion for alleged breach of nonprofit promises, advances to an April 2026 trial, amplifying chaos as X discussions echo hype fatigue and predict capital destruction unless AI delivers mass automation.

OPENAI IS FALLING APART IN REAL TIME

I’ve watched companies implode for decades.

This one has all the warning signs.

OpenAI declared “Code Red” in December.

Altman sent an internal memo telling employees to drop everything because Google’s Gemini 3 is eating their lunch. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff publicly ditched ChatGPT for Gemini after using it for two hours.

ChatGPT traffic fell in November. Second month-over-month decline of 2025. Meanwhile Gemini jumped to 650 million monthly active users.

The company that was supposed to build AGI can’t keep its chatbot competitive.

But the real story is the money…

OpenAI lost $12 BILLION in a single quarter according to Microsoft’s own fiscal disclosures.

Deutsche Bank estimates $143 billion in cumulative negative cash flow before the company turns profitable.

Their analysts put it bluntly: “No startup in history has operated with losses on anything approaching this scale.”

They’re burning $15 million per day on Sora alone.

$5 billion annually to generate copyright-infringing memes.

Even Sora’s lead engineer admitted the “economics are currently completely unsustainable.”

Here’s the big math problem nobody wants to discuss:

It’s going to cost 5x the energy and money to make these models 2x better.

The low-hanging fruit is gone.

Every incremental improvement now requires exponentially more compute, more data centers, more power.

Reports suggest OpenAI’s large training runs in 2025 failed to produce models better than prior versions.

GPT-5 launched to widespread disappointment. Users called it “underwhelming” and “horrible.” OpenAI had to restore GPT-4o within 24 hours because users preferred the old model.

Altman had promised GPT-5 would make GPT-4 feel “mildly embarrassing.” Instead, users complained it was worse at basic math and geography.

They’ve released GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2 since.

Same complaints each time: too corporate, too safe, robotic, boring.

The talent exodus makes this even worse:

CTO Mira Murati. Gone.

Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew. Gone.

Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Gone.

President Greg Brockman. Gone.

Half the AI safety team departed. Multiple executives reportedly cited “psychological abuse” under Altman’s leadership.

And now Elon Musk is suing for up to $134 billion.

A federal judge just ruled the case goes to jury trial in April. There’s “plenty of evidence” that OpenAI’s leaders promised to maintain the nonprofit structure that Musk funded.

Musk provided $38 million in early funding based on those assurances. Now he wants his share of the $500 billion valuation.

OpenAI called it “harassment.” But the judge disagreed.

Here’s what I think happens next:

The AI hype cycle is peaking.

The diminishing returns are becoming impossible to hide.

Competitors are catching up.

The lawsuits are piling up.

OpenAI needs to generate $200 billion in annual revenue by 2030 to justify their projections.

That’s 15x growth in five years while costs keep exploding.

Even Sam Altman admitted investors are “overexcited” about AI.

His exact words: “Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money.”

If I were running an AI startup with good traction right now, I’d be looking for an exit. Sell into the hype before the music stops.

My positioning:

I’m not touching OpenAI-adjacent plays at these valuations. The risk profile is astronomical.

If you’re exposed to the Magnificent 7 through AI infrastructure bets, consider trimming. The gap between promised revolution and delivered reality has never been wider.

The smart money is rotating into sectors where valuations actually reflect fundamentals.

Small and mid-caps are trading near decade lows relative to Big Tech while earnings growth is only marginally lower.

Markets can price risk. But they can’t price chaos.

And OpenAI is chaos dressed up in a $500 billion valuation.