Quote · This Week in Tech (Audio)
TWiT 1088: Model Not Available - Anthropic's Fable Shutdown & Apple's Siri Update
Where this was said
OpenAI IPO, AI Economics, and the Race to the Bottom
At 1:31:38 · chapter starts 1:29:20
With OpenAI filing for an IPO and reportedly pitching the US government to take a stake, Richard Campbell offers his bleak but lucid framework: the AI industry is repeating the dot-com bubble, and most companies will be Netscape — running out of money and getting absorbed — rather than Google, which found sustainable revenue. Leo notes the Wall Street Journal reported OpenAI is weighing significant token price cuts to compete with Anthropic, even as Uber has already burned its entire 2025-2026 AI budget halfway through the year. Christina Warren observes that unlimited subscription plans will disappear, token costs are rising exponentially in the agentic era, and enterprises are starting to revolt. Leo mentions running the Chinese open-weight model Qwen locally for 90% of tasks to avoid API costs — a pressure that will only intensify.
No AI company is making money. Token prices are exploding, Uber burned its entire annual AI budget in half a year, and OpenAI is considering drastic price cuts while losing money on every user. Richard Campbell's verdict: most of them are Netscape.
