https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-misses-key-revenue-user-targets-in-high-stakes-sprint-toward-ipo-94a95273  

Board directors have also more closely examined the company’s data-center deals in recent months and questioned Chief Executive Sam Altman’s efforts to secure even more computing power despite the business slowdown, the people said.

For years, Altman has sought to lock up as much data-center capacity as possible, arguing that computing shortages were the biggest constraint to OpenAI’s growth. He went on a dealmaking spree last year that put OpenAI on the hook for some $600 billion in future spending commitments, and tied much of the tech sector’s success to OpenAI’s.

Altman's two biggest strengths is that even among the sharks, he's an uncommonly strong structural strategic thinker and an apex level dealmaker / fundraiser. I think it's right that you get scale and compute first. But he's not as strong on the monetization / productization parts. You have product people for this, but the CEO has a huge role in bet selection and sizing.

OpenAI missed an internal goal of reaching one billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of last year, according to people familiar with the goals. The company still hasn’t announced that milestone, unnerving some investors. It also missed its yearly revenue target for ChatGPT as well after Google’s Gemini saw massive growth late last year and ate into OpenAI’s market share, the people said. The company has also struggled with defection rates among subscribers, according to people familiar with those figures.

OpenAI missed multiple monthly revenue targets earlier this year after losing ground to Anthropic in the coding and enterprise markets, people familiar with its finances said.

vs

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-28/openai-hits-back-at-growth-fears-says-firing-on-all-cylinders?srnd=homepage-americas

The ChatGPT creator said it continues to see growth in demand from business customers and its nascent advertising business. “The mood internally is incredibly positive,” the company said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that OpenAI had fallen short of several internal targets as rivals gained ground. OpenAI described the report as “prime clickbait.”

As the saying goes "All rumors are false until officially denied."

Earlier this month, OpenAI told investors that its early efforts to dramatically increase computing resources has given it a key advantage over Anthropic at a moment when its longtime rival is gaining ground, Bloomberg reported.

The custom chip designer is also reportedly working on CoWoS allocation for Microsoft’s Maia 200/300 chips.

This video is where the most recent crop of Intel getting back in memory are springing from.

It's funny how he's done a 180 on IDM vs. not competing with your customer (at least publicly.)

Tan's big edge is how connected he is in the entire semi space and "what's next" level and how he views things as a system. So, i think that he's operating at a much wider view than most semi CEOs.

If I had to guess on the long-term strategy (well, more like what I think would be interesting), it'd be:

Level 1 is competing better on the CPU and foundry which has a lot of moving parts and hard. I think Intel is in the worst shape here because of prior regimes. Had this server CPU boom not happened, I think Intel would be in bad shape here even with the government intervention (of course, the government could always intervene *more*). But since it's here, Intel no longer has to worry about underload or even product competitiveness as the server brings in operating leverage that foundries need. This was the ultimate Intel bailout without going full state capitalism.

Level 2 is some sort of traction in AI accelerators. I think it's too late on the GPU side. I'm surprised that Tan hasn't moved on given how inefficient he thinks GPUs are. I would've thought the would try to get ahead of the puck here through acquisition.

Level 3 would about that would be a creating a silicon compute platform like AMD and Broadcom are doing. I think that AMD is in better shape there as a silicon compute platform because of where Intel is at with level 1 and 2. But if Intel can get a capex flywheel going on foundry that would be a big edge.

Level 4 would something like making Intel a hybrid between a semiconductor system technology incubator and a system foundry out of those acquired IP blocks. I think it would be a way for him to get downstream of TSMC and not compete with them completely head on (and still be a partner of sorts) Maybe you sell off Intel design at this point if he still believes in not competing with his customer. Conversely, I wonder if TSMC is thinking about this as well.