AI Bubble Teetering on the Brink as OpenAI Admits to Massive Financial Failure in Leaked Documents
Financial Times reveals that OpenAI’s annualized revenue is roughly $20 billion lower than previously expected:
https://futurism.com/future-society/ai-financial-bubble-openai-billions-failure
Oct 10, 2026, 3:40 PM@cstross Seems like it’s been teetering on the brink for ages. I hang out at the brink on weekends, I’ll see if I can give it a little nudge 🤷♂️
@cstross Maybe the "bad things" we have to put up with include the bankruptcy of OpenAI and the jailing of Sam Altman? Although, you know, he's such a great prognosticator that I'm sure he would have told us about it by now....
@Dtraslerwriting What I'm worried about is a global financial crisis as bad as 2008, when a couple of trillion dollars of assets evaporate overnight and investors go broke. Taking down everything *else* they've used as security for loans to shovel into the AI Mammon's maw.
@cstross Isn't it weird that there was a crisis in 2008 and the people who work in the financial sector are not DESPERATE to avoid it happening again? I really don't understand the big money stuff, so I'm grateful there are people who can lay it out for me, but if their whole business runs on this stuff, why are they not more...you know...responsible? Do they make money on the up AND the down? How? Why?
Also, love your books. Wish more people listened to you.
@Dtraslerwriting You forget that 2008 was 18 years ago. The folks who made policy in senior management back then have mostly retired (a 40-yo would now be 58). Also, the crisis back then emerged from derivatives trading—a totally different market sector—and Trump and his party have done their best to trash the regulations intended to stop such speculation happening again.
In the wake of 2008 🇨🇦 tried to set up a national financial regulator, the CSTO.🤦 It died 3 years ago in no small part (IMHO) because their mandate was to look for "financial instruments" that might cause trouble. 🤦 Outright bad loans, dumb investments and off-book debt was out of scope.🤦I'm fairly sure, based on gossip, that our provincial regulators are going to do nothing, guaranteeing we will be t-boned in the AI crash. 🤦
Once again, risk managers are failing to both observe and actually manage the risk.🤦
"Margin Call" captures the risk management dynamic perfectly. (In 2008 I was in the role Zachary Quinto played. I was ignored. I have saved institutions 10's of millions when they listened to me. I have watched institutions lose 100's of millions when they ignore me. I might change my name to Cassandro.)
@cstross This is shaping up to be the longest Wile E. Coyote moment in my lifetime! About the only thing that's obvious by now is the collapse of asset prices and credit markets will be sudden and catastrophic. My money is still on Oracle imploding first, but who really knows? The math ain't been mathing for years, yet the crisis keeps on not happening. 🤷🏻♂️