A skeptical look at the AI business — bad news for investors betting that today's giant losses turn into fat profits later.

• OpenAI burned through more than $20 billion in a single year, with no clear path to making money.
• The old excuse — "Amazon lost money for years too, then scaled into profit" — may not hold for AI.
• Costs rise in step with revenue, and margins are getting worse, not better, because each new model costs more to run than the last.
• Nvidia sells chips to small cloud companies that borrow billions to buy them, then rents that computing power back — a sign of too few real customers.
• Big spenders like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta report every other revenue line but stay quiet on how much money AI actually brings in.

Outlook: Unless AI starts generating real profits soon, pressure will build on the companies pouring trillions into it, raising the risk of a painful reckoning for investors.