MW This crazy chart shows just how much cash OpenAI is burning as it chases AI profits

By Joseph Adinolfi

The figures were put together by a Deutsche Bank strategist - with some help from ChatGPT

OpenAI expects to burn through more cash between 2024 and 2029 than Uber, Tesla, Amazon and Spotify did - combined - before those companies started making money, according to Deutsche Bank researchers.

OpenAI's latest valuation round pegged the company at roughly $500 billion, making it perhaps the most valuable startup in Silicon Valley and one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world.

It also has been widely reported to be a cash-burning machine.

But how much cash is the company actually burning? And how does it stack up against tech giants like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), which famously burned cash for years before achieving profitability? A team of analysts at Deutsche Bank set out to answer these questions in a report recently shared with MarketWatch.

First, they calculated how much money OpenAI expects to burn between 2024 and 2029, based on media reports about the company's spending and revenue projections. They then compared this figure with what other large tech companies like Amazon, Tesla Inc. $(TSLA)$, Spotify Technology S.A. (SPOT) and Uber Technologies Inc. (UBER) burned through before achieving profitability.

OpenAI's projections show that it expects negative free cash flow of $143 billion and doesn't expect to be cash-flow positive until 2030. Meanwhile, analysts at HSBC have calculated that OpenAI could face a funding shortfall of $207 billion by then.

That could mean OpenAI will need to burn through more cash than the four aforementioned companies combined. Jim Reid, global head of macroeconomic and thematic investing at Deutsche Bank Research and the creator of the chart, highlighted how extraordinary this would be.

"Of course, OpenAI may continue to attract significant funding and could ultimately develop products that generate substantial profits and revolutionise the world. But at present, no start-up in history has operated with expected losses on anything approaching this scale. We are firmly in uncharted territory," Reid wrote.

Where does the money go? OpenAI must pay for access to massive amounts of computing power and energy to train its artificial-intelligence models and to allow them to function.

In a sign of the times, Reid said much of the heavy lifting that went into creating this chart was handled by ChatGPT - OpenAI's chatbot that kicked off the AI race three years ago.

Read: As ChatGPT turns 3, here's what's crashing the party

Reid asked the chatbot to put together a table showing the largest cumulative losses in history racked up by a startup or a young company before turning a profit, he said. Afterward, he double-checked the figures against Bloomberg data and found they were largely consistent.

Reid's analysis is particularly relevant right now: The Information first reported earlier this week that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had issued a "code red" to employees after the launch of several Google AI models, including Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro, sent shares of parent company Alphabet Inc. $(GOOGL)$ surging. Both models have been lauded as superior to OpenAI's latest tool.

OpenAI has raised nearly $73 billion in 16 funding rounds, according to FactSet data. Its latest deal with SoftBank Group Corp. (JP:9984) brought it to its roughly $500 billion valuation.

Other businesses have reported monumental losses in the past that rival the cash that ChatGPT expects to burn through. Reid mentioned the $99 billion loss reported by AOL Time Warner in 2002 following the two companies' ill-fated merger in the dot-com era as one notable example.

Those other past examples often were mature businesses with a record of profitability.

As an aside, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) this week announced a deal to sell its studio and streaming divisions to Netflix Inc. $(NFLX)$ in a deal with an enterprise value of $82.7 billion.

MarketWatch reached out to OpenAI's press office for comment but did not receive a response.

-Joseph Adinolfi

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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December 05, 2025 15:39 ET (20:39 GMT)

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