Comment by nl

> They've got, ballpark, $5t to $10t to make back in the next 5 years, or the hardware buildouts will start getting written down.

I find it disappointing that a completely wrong statement like this ends up the top comment on HN.

It is wrong in both the math, the logic about public markets and understanding accounting.

> $5t to $10t to make back in the next 5 years

I don't know where this number comes from, but it has gone unchallenged.

OpenAI and Anthropic combined have raised around $100B. This is an investment so isn't something the have to "pay back" from earnings - instead investors expect to make that back from the share price being higher than what they paid for it.

> or the hardware buildouts will start getting written down.

The hardware buildouts get written down anyway!! That is a good thing for investors because as the value gets written down they can book a tax loss. ANd it turns out that generally agreed depreciation schedule for GPUs (used to be 3 years, now 5 years by places like Coreweave) is still too conservative since GPU rental prices for 5 year old chips are higher now than when they were new (!!)

All of this makes the rest of the math in the comment incorrect by at least an order of magnitude and under some scenarios possibly 2 orders of magnitude!

That's not a small error!