OpenAI's 14 Billion Dollar Loss and User Betrayal

#keep4o Movement

OpenAI made a strange decision: removing GPT-4o.

"I miss 4o so so so much I just want to talk to it. I've tried many alternatives but they don't work, instead just make me cry. @openai you RUINED our lives." — @shuvivii__

This isn't just one user's complaint. It's a movement. The hashtags #keep4o, #keep4oAPI, and #FireSamAltman have been used extensively in the past week.

Users' feelings for GPT-4o aren't rational. It's emotional attachment.

"Where would OpenAI's valuation come from today without 4o? Ingratitude. Completely offending the consumer side, destroying the most precious foundational core assets, destroying user loyalty." — @1024Adele

★ That's right. OpenAI's consumer business is its foundation. Without ChatGPT's user base, OpenAI is just an API company.

Reddit Censorship

What's happening on Reddit is even stranger.

"Both main subs (r/ChatGPT and r/OpenAI) are nuking complaints. r/ChatGPT started doing this 6 months ago. @OpenAI just so you know, this is not how you improve." — @yv_thorne

This is a typical mistake large companies make when dealing with criticism: pretending the criticism doesn't exist.

★ Censoring user feedback doesn't make the problem disappear. It just makes the most vocal users leave.

Musk's Mockery

Elon Musk has never hidden his opinion of OpenAI.

"OpenAI is going to eat Microsoft alive." — @elonmusk

He said this in August 2025. At the time, it seemed like an exaggeration. Now it seems like a prediction.

"I'm the reason OpenAI exists. It wouldn't exist without me. I came up with the name. The name OpenAI refers to open source." — @elonmusk

Musk's claims are controversial. But one thing is clear: OpenAI is no longer the "open" AI company he helped create.

Six or Seven Fronts

A user's observation:

"Completely offending the consumer side, destroying user loyalty, while simultaneously opening six or seven fronts, none of which are making a big splash, changing the development direction every six months, is economic suicide for any company." — @1024Adele

This is precisely right. OpenAI is doing too many things:

• ChatGPT
• API business
• Enterprise Edition
• Sora (video generation)
• Search (integrated with Nerve)
• OpenClaw (proxy framework)
• And possibly projects we don't know about

★ When a company fights on six or seven fronts simultaneously, it can't win on any of them.

What the 14 Billion Loss Means

The loss itself isn't the problem. The problem is what the loss bought.

Amazon lost money for 20 years, but it built a dominant e-commerce empire. Uber lost money for years, but it changed the way we travel.

What did OpenAI's 14 billion loss buy?

• ChatGPT users? Yes, but they're leaving
• API developers? Yes, but Anthropic and Google are competing for them
• Enterprise customers? Maybe, but Microsoft is also in this market

★ A loss is an investment. But if you're alienating your most loyal users while losing money, it's not an investment. It's self-destruction.

OpenAI's Real Problem

OpenAI's problem isn't technology. Its models are still among the best.

OpenAI's problem isn't money. It has Microsoft's support and unlimited funding.

OpenAI's problem is: it doesn't know who it is.

Is it a research lab? It used to be. Is it a product company? It's trying to be. Is it a platform? It's moving in that direction.

★ A company can do many things. But it can't be everything at once.

Bottom Line

OpenAI is experiencing a classic tech company crisis: being lost in success.

It has the best technology. It has the most users. It has the most money.

But it's losing users' trust. And once trust is lost, it's harder to recover than technology.