OpenAI's Crossroads: The Identity Crisis and Industry Restructuring Behind the $14 Billion Loss Prediction

In the tech industry, nothing is more dramatic than a unicorn valued at $500 billion projecting a $14 billion loss in two years. But this is the reality OpenAI currently faces. However, through the complex discussions on X/Twitter, we see not just a company's financial difficulties, but the fundamental restructuring that the entire generative AI industry is undergoing.

Structural Challenges Behind the Financial Figures

The news that OpenAI is expected to lose $14 billion in 2026 is not unfounded. The reason this number is shocking is not only because of its absolute size, but also because it reveals the deep contradictions in the current AI business model.

SoftBank's recent financial report shows that its Vision Fund has gained $2.4 billion in quarterly earnings through its investment in OpenAI, which indirectly confirms the capital market's confidence in OpenAI. However, this confidence is built on an extremely fragile foundation. As one commentator pointed out: "Where does OpenAI's valuation come from today without GPT-4o?" This question hits the nail on the head.

More noteworthy is that OpenAI is simultaneously launching six or seven fronts—from consumer applications to enterprise services, from code generation to multimodal AI—but none of them have formed a decisive advantage. In business strategy, this is usually seen as "economic suicide." If a company cannot build a moat around its core business while spreading resources across multiple areas, the result is often disastrous.

The Rise of Chinese Competitors and the Inevitability of Price Wars

"Chinese models are 20 times cheaper than their American counterparts, open source, and leading in usage." While this observation may be exaggerated, it points to an undeniable trend: AI is undergoing a commoditization process similar to cloud computing and smartphones.

When technological barriers are lowered, the quality of open-source alternatives improves, and price competition becomes inevitable. For companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, this means they must make a choice in two directions: either maintain a premium through continuous technological innovation, or accept the reality of compressed profit margins and shift to scale competition.

Currently, OpenAI seems to be trying to do both, but the results are not ideal. The user backlash caused by the retirement of GPT-4o shows that even with technological leadership, user loyalty is an extremely fragile asset.

GPT-4o Incident: The Rupture of User Trust and the Complexity of Emotional Connection

OpenAI's decision to retire the GPT-4o model sparked a strong backlash in the user community. The importance of this event lies not in the technology itself, but in the fact that it reveals a new dimension of AI products: emotional connection.

The Wall Street Journal reported that users have developed an "emotional attachment" to ChatGPT, while Business Insider mentioned criticisms such as "excessive flattery" and "psychological delusion." These descriptions seem contradictory, but they actually point to the same problem: when AI systems are advanced enough, their relationship with humans is no longer a simple tool-user relationship, but a more complex, quasi-social interaction.

From a strategic perspective, OpenAI's handling of this issue exposes its "identity crisis." On the one hand, the company is trying to showcase technological progress through new products such as GPT-5.2; on the other hand, users feel "betrayed" and "forgotten." As one commentator put it: "Completely offending the consumer side, destroying the most precious foundational core assets, destroying user loyalty"—the cumulative effect of these actions is far more destructive than any single technical decision.

The Evolution of Organizational Mission: From Non-Profit to "Just Another Big Tech Company"

OpenAI's changing mission statement is the most telling. The company has quietly removed wording such as "safety" and "no financial motivation," and the acquisition of the founder of OpenClaw has been interpreted by critics as a sign of "just another big tech company."

Elon Musk's criticism, while personal, does touch on a core issue: "Open in OpenAI" originally represented open source and non-profit, a check on the monopoly of large tech companies. When this mission is abandoned, OpenAI not only loses its moral high ground, but also loses an important part of its uniqueness.

This shift is not unique to OpenAI, but a common challenge facing the entire industry. When AI transitions from a research project to a commercial product, when safety considerations conflict with profit pressures, when open-source ideals meet the reality of closed ecosystems, every company must make a choice. OpenAI's choice clearly leans towards commercialization, but the long-term consequences of this choice are only just beginning to emerge.## Teknologisk optimisme kontra virkelighedens begrænsninger\n\nSam Altman udtalte for nylig på X, at det er \Denne balancegang handler ikke kun om et enkelt firmas skæbne, men også om hele AI-industriens udviklingsretning. Når vi ser tilbage på dette øjeblik, vil vi måske opdage, at 2024 ikke var toppen af AI-boomet, men snarere starten på dens modne fase – en fase fuld af udfordringer, men også fuld af muligheder.