I thought this burning of cash was all an excuse for the exponential growth we saw in the last 6 years.

They went from GPT 2 a text only, goldfish-esque memory at a 8th grade reading level to what we have today, GPT 5, multimodality + a token window encompassing a enclyopedia and a Doctorate/Masters level of mastery in major subjects.

The economics are probably betting on this exponential growth to continue, which if it fails, the cash would burn.