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Home > Exponential View with Azeem Azhar > Inside the economics of OpenAI (exclusive research)
Podcast: Exponential View with Azeem Azhar
Episode:

Inside the economics of OpenAI (exclusive research)
Category: Technology
Duration: 00:49:46
Publish Date: 2026-02-13 13:50:37
Description:

Welcome to Exponential View, the show where I explore how exponential technologies such as AI are reshaping our future. I've been studying AI and exponential technologies at the frontier for over ten years. Each week, I share some of my analysis or speak with an expert guest to make light of a particular topic. 

To keep up with the Exponential transition, subscribe to this channel or to my newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/

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In this episode, I'm joined by Jaime Sevilla, founder of Epoch AI; Hannah Petrovic from my team at Exponential View; and financial journalist Matt Robinson from AI Street. Together we investigate a fundamental question: do the economics of AI companies actually work? 

We analysed OpenAI's financials from public data to examine whether their revenues can sustain the staggering R&D costs of frontier models. 

The findings reveal a picture far more precarious than many assume; we also explore where the real infrastructure bottlenecks lie, why compute demand will dwarf energy constraints, and what the rise of long-running agentic workloads means for the entire industry. 

Read the study here: https://www.exponentialview.co/p/inside-openais-unit-economics-epoch-exponentialview

We covered: 

(00:00) Do the economics of frontier AI actually work? 

(02:48) Piecing together OpenAI's finances from public data 

(05:24) GPT-5's "rapidly depreciating asset" problem 

(13:25) Why OpenAI is flirting with ads 

(17:31) If you were Sam Altman, what would you do differently? 

(22:54) Energy vs. GPUs; where the real infrastructure bottleneck lies 

(29:15) What surging compute demand actually looks like 

(33:12) The most surprising finding from the research 

(38:02) The race to avoid commoditization 

(43:35) Agents that outlive their models 

 

Where to find me: 

Exponential View newsletter: https://www.exponentialview.co/ 

Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azhar/ 

Twitter/X: https://x.com/azeem 

 

Where to find Jamie: https://epoch.ai or https://epochai.substack.com 

Where to find Matt: https://www.ai-street.co 

 

Production by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Production and research: Chantal Smith and Marija Gavrilov.


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