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The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

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11–20 of 208 posts

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#11
My guess is Sam Altman is a better VC than CEO. Better at hype, networking, fund raising, and back room political hijinks than shipping a focused product

He seems to be trying to take almost a "venture studio" approach by throwing shit at the wall, but the problem with these things is always that the "internal startups" are "founded" by people who don't have enough incentive or control over their product to perform as well as an actual startup, and are distracted by internal politics. And frankly, it may also be that the really good founders will just do their own startup vs working on a quasi-startup inside a large org so there's some selection bias as well.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#12

Has there ever been a period o time where people saw a bubble coming and that we were in one, but it just inexorably refused to pop/drug out this long? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I’m wondering how this period compares to other irrational periods of the economy like railroad fever etc.

It’s not been that long really. The dot com bubble was called a bubble for a while before it finally imploded. And just like now folks were in massive denial that it was a bubble.

One of the challenges here is that a lot of folks simply weren’t around then and haven’t seen what happens when everything implodes overnight. Those that have experienced it know what that looks like and know it will happen again.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#13
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic does look healthier, with their enterprise focus. Or am I missing something?

The LLM usage will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, which will be wildly lucrative in terms of margins (not as good as Google search used to be). If GPT is a leader in that, they'll take a sizable share of that pot. There's a lot more money in being Google -> consumer ads, or Amazon -> consumer ads, or Meta -> consumer ads, than there is in being Anthropic -> enterprise. Just take a look at the…

“The LLM usage will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue”

And yet every attempt to extract even minimal ad revenue has been canned to date as something nobody wants with AI providers retreating in failure.

I don’t doubt that there’s “some” ad revenue to be had but there’s little evidence that ads are going to save the day here.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic does look healthier, with their enterprise focus. Or am I missing something?

The LLM usage will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, which will be wildly lucrative in terms of margins (not as good as Google search used to be). If GPT is a leader in that, they'll take a sizable share of that pot. There's a lot more money in being Google -> consumer ads, or Amazon -> consumer ads, or Meta -> consumer ads, than there is in being Anthropic -> enterprise. Just take a look at the…

>The LLM usage will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, which will be wildly lucrative in terms of margins (not as good as Google search used to be).

This seems like ... not the situation we are in. LLMs are great for coding now but their text generation capabilities aren't exactly capturing the masses or replacing their jobs yet. People are already tired of the deluge of fake content on the internet, it's not going to drive a second revolution in web ads.

The $20-200 LLM plans are all subsidized and aren't paying for themselves. Something has to give here.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#16

Has there ever been a period o time where people saw a bubble coming and that we were in one, but it just inexorably refused to pop/drug out this long? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I’m wondering how this period compares to other irrational periods of the economy like railroad fever etc.

Bubbles don't pop overnight. In the aftermath of any collapse, you can generally see a pretty clear pattern of red flags (and attempts to minimize them or cover them up). Some parties notice earlier than others, but the realization is generally a much more gradual process than the collapse.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#17
post #12

Has there ever been a period o time where people saw a bubble coming and that we were in one, but it just inexorably refused to pop/drug out this long? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I’m wondering how this period compares to other irrational periods of the economy like railroad fever etc.

It’s not been that long really. The dot com bubble was called a bubble for a while before it finally imploded. And just like now folks were in massive denial that it was a bubble. One of the challenges here is that a lot of folks simply weren’t around then and haven’t seen what happens when everything implodes overnight. Those that have experienced it know what that looks like and know it will happen again.

It's no coincidence that daytrading ascended with the dotcom era.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#18
post #11

My guess is Sam Altman is a better VC than CEO. Better at hype, networking, fund raising, and back room political hijinks than shipping a focused product He seems to be trying to take almost a "venture studio" approach by throwing shit at the wall, but the problem with these things is always that the "internal startups" are "founded" by people who don't have enough incentive or control over their product to perform a…

I'd say he's a better CTO than CEO

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#19
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic does look healthier, with their enterprise focus. Or am I missing something?

The LLM usage will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in ad revenue, which will be wildly lucrative in terms of margins (not as good as Google search used to be). If GPT is a leader in that, they'll take a sizable share of that pot. There's a lot more money in being Google -> consumer ads, or Amazon -> consumer ads, or Meta -> consumer ads, than there is in being Anthropic -> enterprise. Just take a look at the…

Not interested in a service with ads throughout my workday, which is why I switched to Anthropic.

Billions in projected revenue is nothing but hype/cope. Google and Meta got their edge because their product was offered for "free" to the masses.

Re: The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened

#20
post #3
post #2

This is important context in the wake of yesterday’s “raise” announcement. A lot of this stuff seems to just quietly never happen once the ink on the PR puff dries. The AI industry increasingly looks in scramble mode to keep the hype going as those storm clouds of financial and business reality get darker and darker on the horizon.

Anthropic does look healthier, with their enterprise focus. Or am I missing something?

Outwardly it looks much better.

But between their token curtailment and time of day restrictions, and some of the clues in the code leak (regex for sentiment, telling the public client to be "brief") it seems like they are facing some capacity issues.

Im guessing that the accountants at all the AI incumbents drink heavily.

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