They made 300 million revenue last month, apparently up 17x from last year[1]. To get a P/E ratio of 20, assuming (falsely) that their spending holds constant, they'd need ~4x more revenue
I hold costs constant at $8B and get x = 4.4. $8B is probably a slight overestimate of current costs, I just took the losses from the article and discounted the last year's revenue to $3B. Users use inference which costs money so, in reality, costs will scale up with revenue, which is why I note this is a false assumption. But I also don't know how much of that went into training and whether they'll keep training at the current rate, so I can't get to a better guess.
If OpenAI starts making a lot of money on each subscription -- implied by your assumption that revenues will 4.4x while expenses stay constant -- the competition will aggressively undercut OpenAI in price. Everybody wants to take market share away from OpenAI, and that means OpenAI has to subsidize their users or sell at break even to prevent that from happening.
Furthermore, training also gets exponentially more expensive as models keep growing and this R&D is not optional. It's absolutely necessary to keep current OpenAI subscribers happy.
OpenAI will lose money, and lots of it, for years to come. They have no clear path to profitability. The money they just raised will last maybe 18 months, and then what? Are they going to raise another 20bn at a 500bn valuation in 2026? Is their strategy AGI or bust?
"That meant OpenAI could provide a return for investors, but those profits were limited. OpenAI has also long been in talks to restructure itself as a for-profit company. But that is not expected to happen until sometime next year..."
I'm not justifying anything here but I think their revenues are expected to triple next year...now that doesn't mean they will of course. But why do you say they've flatlined?
But the revenue has flatlined and you can't raise your existing users cost by 20x...
It truly is a mystery as to how anybody throwing other peoples money hopes to get it back from OpenAI