Does OpenAI's Internal Token Usage Count as OpEx?

oravecz · reddit · 2026-08-17

Question: Considering the revenue vs. cost imbalance in frontier labs, the author suspects internal consumption is a major factor.
Hypothesis: Labs might be the largest consumers of their own inference (for model eval, coding platform ops, business analytics).
Accounting: Are these internal tokens booked as operating expenses? If not, public cost figures may be misleading.
Discussion: Raises questions about how internal compute "tax" is accounted for in lab financials.

More from Companies & People