The headline should've been "OpenAI annualised revenues $20B less than previously signalled by us". The FT is just reporting high number to create a story, then a low number to create another story.
> far short of the $70bn reported by the FT and other media outlets late last month based on information that was provided to investors.
Still, seems it is still true that their number is not directly comparable to Anthropic's because they calculate it differently, I think that part still stands and is pretty relevant here.
Though I agree with your sentiment that FT is reporting this stuff in a way to stir the pot and create outrage. Speculating about a private company like this is stupid.
It just wasn't clear exactly what the error was (e.g. was a projection of a $70B ARR by end of year being misinterpreted as $70B ARR now -- that would have been stupid, but less stupid than the "investors added a fudge factor to the numbers" story that they're now going with).
> based on information that was provided to investors.
It was OpenAI spreading their bullshit annualized revenue.
OpenAI and Anthropic always play this silly game to pretend they are in anyway viable. It is always ARR, "adjusted" revenue, etc. "We are profitable when we pretend we don't have expenses".
The press that reports on this shit is very much complicit, they report on bullshit metrics spread by these companies to generate hype.
> outside of OpenAI control.
If OpenAI is as uncertain of their numbers to the magnitude of 20B, they should stop spreading bullshit metrics. In fact this should be considered fraud.
People can just write stuff. That does not make it wrong but that also does not make it right. If your claim rests on some claim that some anonymous actor got some information, that's just not super convincing and neither is pointing at it as some sort of truth.
>> based on information that was provided to investors.
>It was OpenAI spreading their bullshit annualized revenue.
Did you read the article?
>The discrepancy arose from attempts by OpenAI’s own investors to produce a direct comparison with Anthropic’s annualised revenues, according to a person familiar with the matter. The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as Amazon’s AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not.
>Investors’ efforts to “gross up” OpenAI’s annualised revenue prompted reports that the figure was around $40bn in July, said the person.
>OpenAI later told its backers that its annualised revenues had jumped more than 70 per cent since July, prompting reports that the figure was about $70bn at the end of September — a number the company did not deny.
>However, the new investor presentation shows close to $30bn annualised revenues in July.
Sounds like what happened wasn't that openai "spreading their bullshit annualized revenue", it was that they gave some vague figure that investors the media and other investors extrapolated, and it turned out that extrapolation was incorrect. Both the $40bn and $70bn figure did not come from openai directly.
Its comically bad how this circus is playing out.