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How Does OpenAI Survive?

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Throughout the last year I’ve written in detail about the rot in tech — the spuriousness of charlatans looking to accumulate money and power, the desperation of the most powerful executives to maintain control and rapacious growth, and the speciousness of the latest hype cycle — but at the end of the day, these are just companies, which leads to a very simple question: can the largest, most prominent company in tech’s latest hype cycle actually survive? I am, of course, talking about OpenAI. Regulars to this newsletter will know that I’m highly skeptical of OpenAI’s product, its business model, and its sustainability. While I don’t want to rehash the arguments made in previous newsletters and podcasts, here’s the crux of the matter: generative AI is a product with no mass-market utility - at least on the scale of truly revolutionary movements like the original cloud computing and smartphone booms - and it’s one that costs an eye-watering amount to build and run. Those two factors raise

Throughout the last year I’ve written in detail about the rot in tech — the spuriousness of charlatans looking to accumulate money and power , the desperation of the most powerful executives to maintain control and rapacious growth , and the speciousness of the latest hype cycle — but at the end of the day, these are just companies, which leads to a very simple question: can the largest, most prominent company in tech’s latest hype cycle actually survive? I am, of course, talking about OpenAI. Regulars to this newsletter will know that I’m highly skeptical of OpenAI’s product, its business mod

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