Ed Zitron Observation First said 2026-03-17

“OpenAI claims it made $13.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and “only” lost $8 billion — but those numbers seem unlikely considering my report from November of last year that had OpenAI at $4.3 billion in revenue on $8.67 billion of inference costs through September 2025, and this is accrual accounting, which means these are from the quarters in question.”

Why Are We Still Doing This?, paragraph 18. The full statement is at the source.

Our reading, the sentence that was checked:

OpenAI's claim of $13.1 billion in 2025 revenue and only an $8 billion loss is probably inaccurate, given $4.3 billion revenue against $8.67 billion inference costs through September 2025.

Assessment: Can’t be checked Not checked against evidence

Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it

Where's Your Ed At, Why Are We Still Doing This?, paragraph 18.

Said: 2026-03-17
Source observed: 2026-10-28live page, full text, public
Evidence: Not checkedboth screens found it cannot be checked
Assessment recorded: 2026-10-29assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-1b5ecd-a1

We recorded 16 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.

The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2026-03-17. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.

What the claim commits to

Kind: Observation
Deadline, as the speaker wrote it: None stated. This site does not add one.
Deadline state when assessed: No horizon
Deadline state on 2026-10-29: No horizon (the release’s reference date)

From the speaker

$13.1 billion revenue, $8 billion loss

Our interpretation

None added.

This claim is not graded on evidence. The record checks that the words are quoted correctly and attributed to the right person, and that the claim is classified correctly.

Current assessment

Not graded on evidence

Outcome: Can’t be checked

Both AI providers screened this claim on their own and found that public evidence could not settle it. It is recorded and attributed, not scored.

Why it can’t be checked

Both screens gave the same reason:

Stated as a chance or a possibility, or at medium or low confidence.

Evidence: Not checked
Deadline state when assessed: No horizon
Assessment recorded: 2026-10-29
Policy version: 2026-10-28.7

Rationale

Not checked against evidence. Two independent screens, one from each provider, both found this stated as a chance or a possibility, or at medium or low confidence.

Limitations

None recorded.

Evidence (0 items)

No evidence was searched for. Both screens found that public evidence could not settle this claim.

This claim is about OpenAI, and models from OpenAI worked on this record: gpt-6-astra screened it. Agreement between models is a check, not proof.

This claim was not checked against evidence. claude-opus-5-5 (Anthropic) extracted it from the post and wrote the sentence at the top, our reading of the claim. claude-opus-5-5 (Anthropic) and gpt-6-astra (OpenAI) then screened it independently, without seeing each other’s answers. Both confirmed that the sentence says what the author said, and both found that public evidence could not settle the claim. No model wrote the assessment: code composed its text from the two screens, so there was no separate check of the final text. Code, not a model, decided whether it could be published.

Agreement between models is a check on the record, not proof that the assessment is right. Anthropic and OpenAI make these models, and some claims on this site are about those companies. How the method works.

Where it was said (1)

Said once in the sources this register covers.

2026-03-17: Where's Your Ed At, Why Are We Still Doing This?
OpenAI claims it made $13.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and “only” lost $8 billion — but those numbers seem unlikely considering my report from November of last year that had OpenAI at $4.3 billion in revenue on $8.67 billion of inference costs through September 2025, and this is accrual accounting, which means these are from the quarters in question.
Where
paragraph 18
Published
2026-03-17
Source observed
2026-10-28, live page
Access
full text, public

History

Assessment versions

Assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-1b5ecd-a1: Current. Outcome: Can’t be checked. Not checked against evidence. Public date not recorded.

Recorded events

2026-10-29
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment wyea-why-are-we-still-doing-this-1b5ecd-a1.