Quote · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
No Mercy / No Malice: 1999.AI
Where this was said
OpenAI's Cracking Financials: The 1999 Parallel
At 9:50 · chapter starts 9:20
This is the essay's sharpest section. Galloway assembles the OpenAI evidence with the precision of a prosecutor. Leaked financials show a $21 billion loss in 2025. For every dollar subscribers pay for ChatGPT, the company spends nearly three. OpenAI is projecting $100 billion in advertising revenue by 2030, but per eMarketer, the ad business is on pace to miss that target by 90%. C-suite departures, a lawsuit from Apple, and reports of a delayed IPO complete the picture. Galloway's verdict: the business model resembles an LLM hallucination — plausible-sounding output with no grounding in reality.
OpenAI's leaked financials reveal the company lost $21 billion in 2025, a scale of losses Galloway compares to the unsustainable burn rates of 1999 dot-com companies.
For every dollar subscribers spend on ChatGPT, OpenAI spends nearly three — a business model Galloway likens to an LLM hallucination.
OpenAI projected $100 billion in advertising revenue by 2030, but its ad business is on pace to fall short of that forecast by 90%, according to eMarketer.
Sam Altman requested a government bailout framed as an investment opportunity, offering US taxpayers a 5% stake in OpenAI — what Galloway calls cronyism, not capitalism.
Sam Altman wants US taxpayers to take a 5% stake in OpenAI, framing it as giving citizens a share of AI's profits. But AI has no profits. Galloway calls it cronyism — a well-connected private firm extracting a government lifeline and marketing it as patriotism.
