99% of AI Startups Will Be Dead by 2026 – Here's Why

OpenAI’s Hidden Weakness Everyone treats OpenAI as untouchable — the intelligence layer of the entire industry. Since late 2022, nearly every wrapper, agent, and productivity tool has stood on their shoulders. They built the strongest model. They had the earliest lead. No one has reshaped the market more. And yet, they’re exposed. Their dominance depends on distribution — and distribution comes from the very wrappers everyone dismisses. All those SaaS tools built on top of GPT-4? They’re not just passengers. They’re OpenAI’s customer base. And if even a few of them collapse, API revenue goes with them. This is the hidden risk. Wrappers burn cash on freemium users running token-heavy workflows. But OpenAI still charges them per request. It doesn’t matter if the user pays — the wrapper eats the cost. Their entire business model hinges on converting fast enough to outpace burn. Some will. Most won’t. And when they vanish, OpenAI feels it. That’s the paradox: OpenAI owns the tech, ... Read full article.