> OpenAI’s refusal to launch and iterate an ads product for ChatGPT — now three years old — is a dereliction of business duty, particularly as the company signs deals for over a trillion dollars of compute.

I think this is intentional by Altman. He’s a salesman, after all. When there is infinite possibility, he can sell any type of vision of future revenue and margins. When there are no concrete numbers, It’s your word against his.

Once they try to monetize, however, he’s boxed in. And the problem with OpenAI vs. Google in the earlier days is that he needs money and chips now. He needs hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars.

Ad revenue numbers get in the way. It will take time to optimize; you’ll get public pushback and bad press (despite what Ben writes, ads will definitely not be a better product experience.)

It might be the case that real revenue is worse than hypothetical revenue.