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The alarm bells are going off at OpenAI.<\/p>\n
What was once a healthy lead over its competition thanks to its blockbuster AI chatbot ChatGPT has turned into a razor-thin edge, motivating OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to declare a \u201ccode red<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The financial stakes are almost comical in their magnitude: The company is lighting billions of dollars on fire, with no end in sight; it\u2019s committed to spending well over $1 trillion<\/a> over the next several years while simultaneously losing a staggering sum<\/a> each quarter.<\/p>\n And revenues are lagging far behind, with the vast majority of ChatGPT<\/a> users balking at the idea of paying for a subscription. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Google has made major strides, quickly catching up with OpenAI\u2019s claimed 800 million or so weekly active ChatGPT users<\/a> as of September. Worse yet, Google is far better positioned to turn generative AI into a viable business \u2014 all while minting a comfortable $30 billion in profit each quarter, as the Washington Post points out<\/a>.<\/p>\n The question on many investors\u2019 minds: if the AI bubble were to collapse, would OpenAI even survive?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to see a situation where ChatGPT was the early winner,\u201d Porter and Co. equity analyst Ross Hendricks told WaPo. \u201cThey\u2019re going to end up just like MySpace did with the inability to truly monetize and break away from the pack.\u201d<\/p>\n In a Thursday note, Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid estimated staggering losses for OpenAI amounting to $140 billion between 2024 and 2029.<\/p>\n \u201cOpenAI may continue to attract significant funding and could ultimately develop products that generate substantial profits and revolutionize the world,\u201d he wrote, as quoted by WaPo. \u201cBut at present, no start-up in history has operated with expected losses on anything approaching this scale.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are firmly in uncharted territory,\u201d Reid added.<\/p>\n To even just cover the interest on all the money OpenAI is borrowing, the company\u2019s revenues will have to grow immensely. But according to recent Sensor Tower data reviewed by WaPo, ChatGPT\u2019s monthly active users grew by a mere five percent between July and November. Google\u2019s Gemini AI app soared by a far healthier 30 percent over the same period.<\/p>\n Recent data also suggests ChatGPT user growth is stalling out<\/a> in Europe, highlighting a slowdown that couldn\u2019t come at a worse time for OpenAI.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s latest Gemini 3, in particular, impressed when it was announced released last month, with benchmarks exceeding OpenAI\u2019s most powerful AI models. Its Nano Banana Pro AI image model has also pushed the envelope<\/a>, while OpenAI\u2019s Sora video-generating app has received comparatively little media attention after a storm of controversy<\/a> surrounding its rollout.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Google, either. OpenAI is also facing steep competition from open-source AI models in China, like the startup DeepSeek, whose extremely energy-efficient R1 model threw Silicon Valley into chaos<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n In short, by many indications, OpenAI appears to be in deep water<\/a>, and analysts are growing wary of the company burning through astronomical amounts of money at an unprecedented pace.<\/p>\n Even the so-called \u201cGodfather of AI\u201d and former Google AI lead, Geoffrey Hinton, isn\u2019t optimistic about OpenAI\u2019s future.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s actually more surprising than it\u2019s taken this long for Google to overtake OpenAI,\u201d he told Business Insider<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that right now they\u2019re beginning to overtake it,\u201d he added. \u201cGoogle has a lot of very good researchers and obviously a lot of data and a lot of data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess is Google will win,\u201d Hinton concluded.<\/p>\n