GoKawiilThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that leadership wants OpenAI, the company, to focus. Seems like a plain old business strategy story. Nope!
First, in more prosaic terms, the all-hands and what was said was indicative of need for focus and urgency. I read it as mild panic stations. Second, step back enough and a clear and complete image should emerge. It reveals the real game being played. It is the grand hand at the big AI poker table. The IPO. Who gets there first, who sets the rules. And who really wins.
The IPO is not about one company. Instead it is about three American AI companies — Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, which owns xAI. It is about the scale of money to be raised from the market. It is also the urgency to do so. The Economist notes that if all three offer 15 percent of their shares, the combined sum would roughly equal every dollar raised across all American IPOs over the past decade.
It is against the backdrop of a global crisis, and this being a battle for winner take all. And most importantly, with the Middle East busy with bigger problems, the money spigot for American AI might be as tight as the Strait of Hormuz right now. The Gulf sovereign wealth funds that have been backstopping this AI frenzy have other fish to fry, at present.
Public market investors in New York and London will now have to carry the weight. Which means the IPO window is real, it is short, it is now, and it will not stay open forever. In short, this is a three horse race to the IPO market. And OpenAI isn’t the leading pony.
OpenAI was all over the map. Sora. A web browser called Atlas. A hardware device. TikTok-for-AI. All announced with the same breathless urgency, same press release energy, different product each time. Cashing in on the announcement economy.
Simo told staff last week they had to stop being distracted by “side quests.” That is a remarkable word for what was, in practice, an $840 billion company running several unrelated experiments inside itself while its most focused rival ate its lunch.
All startups, big and small, are messy. Some have more disorder than others. The admission of chaos is a way to show recognition, and eventual correction of the problems. The question to me, is why this admission of chaos? And that’s why you need to bring out the popcorn.
Let’s break down the WSJ news report itself. The fact that the Journal “reviewed” the transcript is a giveaway. The Journal didn’t say they had the transcript, or that it was leaked to them. “Reviewed by” is a tell. This is a controlled leak. Nothing wrong with it.
Companies do it often. Big publications like the Wall Street Journal get the scoops and exclusives. This is a game that has been played for the longest time. Every word attributed to Simo, from “side quests,” to “code red,” to the Anthropic “wake-up call,” was chosen for outside consumption, to shape the story.
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