The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 661 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 58 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
O'Driscoll: Google Search ad dollars will shift to OpenAI
“Their cash cow, which kicks off 200 and forty-odd billion a year of revenue, which is the ads business, Isn't the best product on the market anymore, and some of those dollars will go to open AI, and because it's better real estate.”
Lemkin: SpaceX, Canva, Databricks, and Anthropic will IPO in 2026
“I think we see four IPOs backloaded next year. SpaceX goes out first. Canva comes out of nowhere second. Databricks does it in the back half of the year because it's just time. Anthropic does it at the end of the year. OpenAI probably should have gone first, b…”
Rory O'Driscoll: Anthropic will reach profitability and IPO while OpenAI faces overcommitment
“I think the difference between Anthropix and OpenAI is, OpenAI has more ambition, perhaps, but it's more likely to just get caught In the middle with commitments it can't meet. Whereas I think Entropic is very sensibly and boringly converging on profitability,…”
Shlomo: Anthropic has better models and growth trajectory than OpenAI
“Moving faster. They correct something in coding. They're very focused on delivering value to B to B customers of, they don't have the first mover advantage, but I think they have better models. And when they look at their trajectory they're better positioned f…”
Lemkin: Sam Altman receives zero equity in OpenAI's corporate restructuring
“They're a little interesting, but the craziest thing in this deal, because it's unprecedented, I think in our lifetimes is OpenAI said that Sam Altman will still have no shares in the combined entity.”
O'Driscoll: Microsoft leadership nailed OpenAI deal, but failed on shipping technology
“I think when all is said, and as I said before, on Microsoft's side, when all is said and done, the shareholders should award medals to Satya, The CFO and their GC and they should hire someone else to do their technology because they haven't shipped, right?”
Lloyd: Anthropic API Margins Are 60%, OpenAI Margins Are 50%
“Anthropic has a big margin on their API business right now. What I've heard is 60% margin on Anthropic's API. I've heard 50% on OpenAI.”
O'Driscoll: Sam Altman took 10% of AMD for chip purchasing privileges
“Sam Altman understands power. He has more power than AMD, so he took 10% of their company for the privilege of selling stuff to him.”
O'Driscoll: Non-OpenAI and Anthropic AI startups won't raise needed capital
“I don't think it's a monopoly, but I think it's definitely an oligopoly. To be clear. So I think that, yes, the number two at Tropic clearly can. It's a differentiated number two with an overlapping, but strategy, but not, you know, one is winning in consumer,…”
O'Driscoll: Microsoft enabled OpenAI just as IBM enabled Microsoft 30 years ago
“The role of IBM has been played by Microsoft. They set this Viper in motion, and they've allowed it to exist, and in one sense for a while it looked like Microsoft got a good deal because they got access to OpenAI's technology early on, and they got a little b…”
Taneja: Anthropic's enterprise business will be bigger than OpenAI's
“I think their enterprise business I'd argue will be bigger than OpenAI if it already isn't already not having spent that much.”
Lemkin: OpenAI Stole YouTube Videos to Train AI Models
“This isn't even stealing YouTube videos like OpenAI did.”
Lemkin: Kleiner Perkins' $100M Anthropic check is just a logo deal
“You got, you can't walk into the partners and not have anthropic or open AI on the website. It's not enough. Yeah. It's a low, I think it's a logo deal.”
Lemkin: Stakeholders will engineer an $800B valuation for OpenAI if needed
“And if open AI needs 800 to survive, open AI will find 800. It will find it. It may be through investors that get other things. It may be through existing investors. It may be through weird combinations of offshore money, but no one, No, no, no one can afford …”
Lemkin: Windsurf was dead without access to Anthropic's Claude
“Windsurf without Claude was dead. That's why he had to find a deal that night, that weekend when OpenAI died.”
Lemkin: xAI could overtake all AI competitors within 12 months
“So I honestly went in the last release, I went from spite app to you could, this is such a fluid space. You could see him pulling ahead of everybody in 12 months. It's very plausible.”
Lemkin: Oracle closed a $30 billion annual deal with OpenAI
“Oracle just closed a thirty billion dollar a year deal with open AI, right? An extra thirty billion.”
Lemkin: Microsoft has no leverage over OpenAI because AGI is imminent
“The reason I think they have no leverage is because I think that whatever AGI is, we're going to be there pretty soon.”
Lemkin: OpenAI has a 67% two-year employee retention rate
“67% retention rate employees after two years.”
Lemkin: OpenAI's hardware device will launch within a year for $20
“This is going to be huge. It will launch in a year. It will be massively subsidized. So it'll be 20 bucks for this device. Okay. They will figure out the form factor. I don't know what the right combination is, whether it's embedded in your ear, like the baris…”
O'Driscoll: OpenAI will declare AGI based on Microsoft contract negotiations
“It'll achieve open AGI whenever it suits Sam Altman in his negotiations with Microsoft over the open AGI term in that contract to declare it to be AGI. Because it's a meaningless, ill-defined term that will be used for economic leverage.”
Lemkin: OpenAI is the most successful dysfunctional company ever seen
“I've never seen a dysfunctional company that's more successful than OpenAI.”
Lemkin: Competitors will never catch ChatGPT's revenue lead
“ChatGPT has pulled away. You cannot catch it. No matter what anybody says, you will never catch that revenue.”
Feldman: ChatGPT was a UI invention, not a technical innovation
“ChatGPT was not really a technical innovation. It was a user interface invention.”
Osika: OpenAI has lost all of its best talent to Anthropic
“OpenAI lost all their best talent to Anthropic”
Osika: Buy Grok for business execution, short OpenAI on talent drain
“So I would buy Grok. I think they're also very ruthless in like finding business opportunities. We'll, we'll see about that, but I feel like they could be good at that. Even though Anthropic is my favorite, I love the culture and I love the, like the leadershi…”
Ramaswamy: OpenAI Strategically Misdirects Competitors on Hard Technical Problems
“It's also now becoming clear that they are good at misdirection in terms of where, you know, where they tell people hard problems are and it is good that people like DeepSeek, you know, went and busted some of those some of those myths.”
Ross: OpenAI will lose the closed model battle and should open source
“I can't speak for Sam Altman or OpenAI, but if I was in that position, I would be gearing up to open source my models in response. Because it's pretty clear you're gonna lose that, so you might as well try and win all the users and the love from open sourcing.”
Ross: OpenAI accidentally subsidized DeepSeek via unprofitable API tokens
“Open AI Was effectively subsidizing accidentally the training of this model because they were using open AI, right? And, you know, rumors are that open AI may not be completely profitable yet in terms of every token in the API, like on the subscriptions maybe,…”
Ross: OpenAI Could Switch Backend to DeepSeek and Retain Users
“Most people think of them synonymously as AI. They could just switch to deep seek and people would still use them. It's brand. It's one of the seven powers.”
Sivulka: xAI could overtake OpenAI and Anthropic in valuation within two years
“I think XAI is the most undervalued company, and a really spicy take. I actually think XAI might overtake OpenAI and Anthropic in value over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months.”
Sivulka: Fine-tuned models will never catch up to inference scaling
“And so you saw the idea of, ah, of post training or kind of like this refined, verticalized model creation, ah, just always would lose to scaling laws. And maybe we're at the end of scaling laws at training, but I actually think, you know, Hebbia and now OpenA…”
Pishevar: Uber allies should have staged OpenAI-style employee revolt for Kalanick
“What I wish I had done or had the wisdom to know to do was what, you know, Sam and his allies did in getting the employees at OpenAI to back Sam and say, if he doesn't come back, we're gonna leave. . It was very powerful, and if we had done that at Uber, becau…”
Shulman: Scaling laws will not solve AI music generation
“For music, It's very different from text, and I think people will very sloppily look at the world of OpenAI and Anthropic and the hyperscalers and say audio is just a couple years behind, which it is, but that scale is gonna solve all these things. But unlike …”
Shulman: Empty text box UI is wrong for most AI products
“They did every AI company a huge disservice because everybody thinks that just like empty text box is now the right interface, and it is for ChatGPT, and it is incorrect for basically everything else.”
Moubeche: I don't trust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for a second
“Because this guy is like, so like, I don't trust him like a second. He's been changing his mind. Like so many times”
Podjarny: Perplexity won't succeed as expected due to Google's dominant search moat
“I still think perplexity is not going to go as far as people think. Mostly not because of OpenAI, but because of Google.”
Altman: Product strategy is a personal weakness and current area of uncertainty
“The thing I'm struggling with most this week is I feel more uncertain than I have in the past about what our, like the details of what our product strategy should be. I think that product is a weakness of mine in general and it's something that right now the c…”
Narayanan: GPT-4 passing bar and medical exams meant nothing for actual practice
“So when GPT-IV came out and OpenAI claimed that it passed the bar exam and the medical licensing exam people were very excited slash scared about what this means for doctors and lawyers, and the answer turned out to be approximately nothing, right? Because it'…”
Gomez: OpenAI's AGI effort is taking a backseat to consumer products
“At least like lately, or in the new OpenAI they're like a product company. They're like hardcore building a consumer product. That is their objective, and it's working. People love that product. It's, you know, a household name at this point. So I think in the…”
Cahn: ChatGPT Is Now a $3.4 Billion Revenue Business
“Definitely OpenAI. I mean, OpenAI has a brand, it has consumer distribution, it has product market fit with ChatGBT, which is a 3.4 billion dollar revenue business now. I think ChatGBT will definitely be around. Yeah, I think a bunch of the others will too for…”
Sam Altman Over-Indexed on AI Safety Advocates for OpenAI's Board
“I think he was making too much of a AI safety, you know, kind of, who are the most AI safety people, make sure they're on the board.”
Microsoft Board Approved $1B for OpenAI Despite Having No Clear Product
“The very first OpenAI Microsoft deal was, you know, Satya and Kevin Scott brought to the Microsoft board. We want to put a billion dollars into the investment in this vehicle. From a five one C three that doesn't really have any particular plans at making its …”
Hoffman Offered to Cover OpenAI Salaries When Elon Musk Departed
“When Elon had announced to the company that he was leaving and not financing it anymore, and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, Sam called me, and I said, look, I'll cover the salaries, and on, and he asked me if he joined the board, and I said, yes, …”
Srinivas: Anthropic is algorithmically superior to OpenAI
“Anthropic because they're algorithmically a superior company. Like they got whatever open AI got to with lower capital. They have better post training and like things like that.”