alt Hacker NewsGift link: https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/f77156...
Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
From the article: "According to a person with knowledge of the matter, the discrepancy arose from attempts by OpenAI’s own investors to produce a direct comparison with Anthropic’s annualised revenues. The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. Efforts to “gross up” OpenAI’s annualised revenue led to reports that the group’s annualised revenue had hit $40bn in August. The company has since told investors its revenues have grown more than 70 per cent, leading to the $70bn figure"
**sorry the gift link can only be viewed 3 times..
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>The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not.
gift link didn't work for me, and is this poorly phrased? because it seems implausible that OpenAI doesn't typically include revenue from their models being used on AWS. Perhaps the "gross up" is referring to how the number is included? like Anthropic was using the value pre-removal of revenue sharing and putting the revenue share subtraction as a separate expense?
[not a finance guy so someone tell me I'm wrong if that's not a plausible reading]
Obviously not the same thing as lying, but Anthropic had also been juicing the revenues with making smart models incredibly verbose. In August my org 3x more in API credits vs July. In September the spend returned to July levels partially because they made models less verbose, but mostly because we've changed how we are using them.
> Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
I'm confident both companies are lying about their revenues.
All that tells you is that they haven't at all abandoned the disinformation: Now they are blaming Anthropic for it and trying to shift attention to them.
You can still learn something from it: Look at what they do, not what they say - look at how sophisticated their public communication is. They deliver that information in the perfect manner - not only the redirection and striking a blow against their rival, but they use an anonymous "person with knowledge of the matter": A named source at OpenAI might betray the self-interest in the statement, but some anonymous third party is just reporting what they know.
These guys are very good at it, though that shouldn't surprise you. Look at their product, in one sense a highly effective disinformation machine.
> Apparently they overstated revenue in an attempt to try to provide a direct comparison with Anthropic's reported metrics.
Just to clarify from my understanding of the quote, "they" here is openai investors, not openai.