this sets out very clearly what OpenAI is doing, it's a fairly simple revenue recognition scam - where you book revenue you haven't yet, ah, received.
(Morally if not legally fraud. Yet.)
Trumpeting "$1 trillion" of receivables on $4.3b actual revenue.
https://marketdepth.substack.com/p/accounting-and-the-end-of-the-business
I recall one 2000's dotcom startup doing some sort of shenanigans involving building boxes, getting only a customer nod that they wanted them, and then counting it as revenue.
When the crash came, the customers evaporated, and the company collapsed, there was this big pile of product piled up somewhere, fated to be sold off cheap as unwanted garbage.
It showed up in local junk stores like Weird Stuff years later.