AI Newsletter

According to a widely-discussed Reddit thread (654 upvotes), OpenAI has missed key revenue and user targets ahead of its planned IPO. The community is speculating about a liquidity shortage within 18 months and potential consequences for dependent infrastructure partners like CoreWeave. The finding hits OpenAI at a critical time: the Musk-Altman trial is ongoing, and competitor Anthropic is raising capital from Wall Street heavyweights.

The ongoing lawsuit between Elon Musk and Sam Altman could, if Musk prevails, block the OpenAI IPO and trigger investor clawbacks – a scenario that, according to the thread with 939 upvotes, could set off a chain reaction in the AI investment market. Additional explosive detail: Musk admitted in proceedings that xAI copied OpenAI methods in building Grok – undermining US criticism of Chinese AI technology transfer. The trial thus represents a market, legal, and reputational risk for the entire AI ecosystem.

Anthropic has founded a new joint venture with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to help financial institutions integrate Claude into their systems – meanwhile, OpenAI raised over $4 billion for a similar enterprise vehicle. The alliance with the world's largest asset managers signals that AI adoption in finance is moving from pilot phase into infrastructure. For competition, this means: Anthropic secures institutional distribution channels that OpenAI currently lacks despite GPT-5.5 momentum.

The Trump administration is considering a vetting process for AI models before release, according to the NYT – triggered by Anthropic's powerful 'Mythos' model, which accidentally reached 40 unauthorized companies. State-level pre-release screening would significantly slow the innovation cycles of labs and alter the competitive position of US providers relative to Chinese competitors. It is the first concrete regulatory intervention signal from the current US government in AI model development.

In the first quarter of 2026, a record $226 billion in venture capital flowed into AI companies – roughly 80% of total global VC investment. Capital is extremely concentrated in a few US frontier labs, while Polymarket gives OpenAI only a 2% chance of having the best model by end of May (Anthropic: 78%). The combination of capital concentration and shifted model rankings points to a tectonic shift in power within the AI industry.