AI: OpenAI, "Miles to go before I sleep". RTZ #628

...OpenAI's work just starting, a decade in. Same for a frenetically scaling AI industry.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,”

“But I have promises to keep,”

“And miles to go before I sleep,”

“And miles to go before I sleep.”

—”Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, 1922, Robert Frost,

That riveting verse came to mind while reading OpenAI founder/CEO Sam Altman’s pithy x/tweet yesterday on the latest top ten websites in the world for january 2025:

“man, still a long way to go to run down google”

The chart in question was this one:

It’s a chart that puts OpenAI at #6 in the world with a 2.33% traffic share vs almost 50% for Alphabet Google, if one combines the 29% share for google.com and 20%+ share for YouTube in the top two positions. And then a combined 10%+ for Meta, if one adds up nos. 3 through 5 for Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in that order.

For all the impressive accomplishments of OpenAI now for a decade, since the two plus years since it’s ‘ChatGPT moment’, and it’s impressive leadership of late in AI Reasoning and Agentic products and software in various classes of o1, o3, Operator and Deep Reasoning, and its 300 million plus weekly users, the company is just starting its journey down the deep snowy woods Frost describes.

Even after the dramatic governance struggles of two years ago, the impressive, epic funding raises of late, from $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation, to the recent $100 billion + Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture with Softbank, to the reported $25+ billion new raise from Softbank at a $300+ billion range.

AND of course the latest iteration of the ongoing ‘cage-match’ with former OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, with his $97.4 billion bid for all of OpenAI. And of course Sam Altman’s counter-bid of $9.74 billion for x/Twitter:

“no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want”.

And all of that is of course after OpenAI’s memorable Superbowl ad last night showing the journey of human technology from the fire and the wheel to chatgpt today. Or as Sam described it on x/twitter:

“an ode to the history of technology, and human potential”

Worth the watch if you missed it:

And of course Sam’s latest essay on OpenAI’s journey to AGI with ‘three observations’, a continuation of a series of essays I’ve written about earlier.

Notably, Sam ends his latest essay addressing the other OpenAI controversy in the air, their partnership with Microsoft, as OpenAI builds new joint ventures with Softbank and others:

“We fully expect to be partnered with Microsoft for the long term. This footnote seems silly, but on the other hand we know some journalists will try to get clicks by writing something silly so here we are pre-empting the silliness…”

And all of those events just in the past few hours and days.

And while DeepSeek of China fame, just having bought the simple and pithy domain name ‘ai.com’ for the world to go directly to DeepSeek.

A move worthy of Elon Musk, who just said he has ‘no plans to buy TikTok’, which is facing its own dramatic bid against a US ban taking effect by April.

We’ll see what if anything, the DeepSeek move does to the top ten web traffic charts in the months to come.

The stages have been set indeed. The multi-ring circus is filing up. Drama abounds in the air.

And not just OpenAI, but the key players in this AI Tech Wave, ALL have ‘miles to go before they sleep’. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)