$1M covers just 10.5 minutes of OpenAI's compute spend, critic calculates

wordgrammer · x · 2026-09-09

A back-of-envelope calculation circulating on X notes that $1,000,000 — which sounds like a fortune — would only cover about 10.5 minutes of OpenAI's compute spending.

The figure was thrown at tech commentator Ed Zitron as a visceral illustration of the argument that OpenAI's financials don't add up, underscoring the staggering scale of frontier AI compute burn.

Related event: $1 Million Covers Just 10.5 Minutes of OpenAI's Compute Costs(2 posts)→

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