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The past week has been a chaotic roller coaster ride for OpenAI. And if you've been following, you may have gotten whiplash. So the company with plans to go public has grabbed just about every headline, good and bad, over the past seven days. And as a former journalist and someone that's been covering AI daily for 3 years, this was not a normal week for OpenAI or any big tech company, really. I mean, the amount of moves they're making is head spinning. And I see this as the chaos before the calm before the storm. And the main headline that most people will be talking about this week is that OpenAI killed its once viral AI video platform, Sora. Or maybe that their biggest investor in Microsoft may reportedly sue them for a deal they did with Amazon. Or maybe that the ChatGPT in app shopping experience failed and didn't go as planned. So doubters will see those things and the OpenAI naysayers will say that these are the latest signs that OpenAI is bound to fail. Personally, I see it a different way. I see a company that threw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall throughout 2025 to see what stuck and is finally clearing all, is honing its focus in on its core products as it prepares to potentially go public at a more than 1 trillion dollar valuation. So whatever your viewpoint is on OpenAI, this week alone had like a year's worth of developments. And even if you're a casual ChatGPT user or novice in the AI space, you absolutely need to understand the past week of developments at OpenAI, because it will undoubtedly be talked about in a decade as a moment that started to either make or break the company. All right, we're going to be getting into it on today's episode of Everyday AI. But before we tell you about that, here's the big picture ready? Here's what's going on. OpenAI made more moves in seven days than most companies make in a year. But essentially they're just killing what isn't working and they're going in all in on ChatGPT and its new super app platform. And like I said this week, I think it's going to be remembered as the make or break point when we look back in 3, 5, 10 years on where OpenAI is or maybe isn't as a company. And I think you will be able to wind back in time and look at this week and OpenAI's response to this specific week as that moment in time. So on today's show, we're going to be talking about what OpenAI's retreats and pivots reveal about where the entire AI industry is actually headed. Why I think OpenAI squashing side projects like Sora and shopping isn't a weakness, it's actually a strength. And why OpenAI's chaotic week is actually a very calculated strategy to prepare for a potential trillion dollar ipo. All right, if you're new here, welcome to Everyday AI. My name is Jordan and, well, we do this every day. Everyday AI, it's for you. It's your daily livestream podcast, free daily newsletter helping everyday business leaders like you and me keep up with the roller coaster of AI. I tell you what's important, what's not. You take that information and be the smartest person in AI at your company to grow that company and your career. So this thing's unedited, unscripted, just coming with the, the, the real takes for you here. But if you want all the AI news for today, aside from what we're going over, make sure to check out our newsletter@your everydayai.com. so here's the most recent big headline as we jump into it, because this is what I think most people are going to be talking about for, well, at least a week or so and maybe longer. And it's that Sora is dead. So OpenAI just announced that the standalone Sora app is shutting down. And this happened just six months after launch. So reports say it's consuming too much compute. And I absolutely agree with that. So as of like two weeks ago, we saw reports that the plan was to fold sora ultimately into ChatGPT. And we actually saw some coded leaks that show that they were working on this. But, you know, two weeks after that, this thing is killed entirely. And it's not just the Sora app, right? It was also everything that it had along with it, you know, importantly, that billion dollar Disney deal, right. There was a certain licensing agreement that OpenAI and Disney worked out for, you know, users to use Disney characters. And, and as part of that, Disney provided a $1 billion capital infusion. So, yeah, that's gone now, but reportedly no money ever changed hands. But what's important to remember here is what Sam Altman said when Sora was first released. He essentially said that if Sora didn't improve people's lives in six months, that they'd readjust. And here we are less than six months later and well, it's gone. And I'll say what I said then now, if you didn't hear, after Sora came out, I very much called it brain rot. Right. I think a lot of people, for whatever reason, accuse me of being an OpenAI, you know, shilling for them. That's not my thing. They've never paid me a dollar. Well, their competitors have, which is interesting. No, I say that because I think that OpenAI, top to bottom is the best and the easiest AI platform. If you're trying to bring your day to day, you know, knowledge work into an AI operating system. I think Chat GBT is still the one best platform for that top to bottom for most enterprises, but doesn't mean I blindly think that everything they do is amazing. When it came out, even though it was viral, and I said, yeah, there's some good use cases and you can get some utility out of this, especially if you're in charge of creative at your company. But I said, for the most part, Sora is brain rot. Yeah, it's cool, it's fun, you know, but you had to sign up for a specific app to use it and the app was essentially just AI videos on repeat. I'll say the same thing about Meta's new vibes platform. It's, it's brain rot. Right. I'm not someone that is scrolling, you know, social media shorts, reels, tik toks. Right. That's, that's not me. I think that's, you know, it's my opinion. Right. But I don't think that really helps anyone. So actually got to tip the cap here to Sam Altman for following through. Right. Reportedly there's other reasons that it maybe just wasn't bringing in enough money and OpenAI needed to essentially reallocate the massive compute that they needed to keep up with the SORA demand. Even though it wasn't as viral as it was, I think that there was still a lot of, you know, heavy power users that were eating up a lot of compute and Instead, you know, OpenAI has said that they're going to kind of reallocate that to other areas of the business, but I think people are going to look at this as well. No, SORA failed. Right. It didn't bring in enough money. I don't think that. But SORA going down is just the latest in a absolutely wild week for Open AI ready. I'm going to read you the timeline of the last couple of days, the last week or so here. This is a week ready. Not a year, not a Quarter, not a month. This is the week. All right, so March 18th we saw reports that OpenAI's biggest investor, Microsoft, is considering suing the company over its cloud deal with Amazon. March 19th we finally got reports that OpenAI was going to merge ChatGPT, Codex and their browser Atlas into a single desktop super app. That's some market moving news. Then the next day on March 20, we got the the story that OpenAI was abandoning their instant checkout shopping feature. So you know, the headline said that it failed and that they were instead pivoting to visual product discovery. Then on March 21st. Yeah, so that was. Yeah, on the weekend we saw a story that said that OpenAI was planning to double their workforce. That does not happen. Right. So I think right now their headcount is roughly 4, 500 and reports say that they're going to try to hit 8,000 by the end of the year, so nearly doubling their workforce, even though in January they said that they were going to slow down hiring. Then also over the weekend we saw OpenAI hiring a Meta exec to lead their advertising push. They launched a library feature. A small thing, but I think it actually has larger implications than we think. Then also over the weekend we saw some pre IPO. Right. So yeah, OpenAI reportedly preparing for its initial public offering this year. So we saw some pre IPO docs flag Microsoft reportedly as a major risk for OpenAI. We also saw the potential Helion Fusion Energy deal mounting with Sam Altman stepping down from the Helion board and then the Mountain View campus lease. My gosh, they a nearly half million square foot building that they are now planting in Google's backyard. Right. And then, oh, Sora killed. Oh, and not only that, you know, earlier this week on Tuesday we got the news that Sora was killed and Disney walking away from the $1 billion deal, but also that they raised another $10 billion as part of a $120 billion round and that they have their newest model that's a completely new pre trained model. So not a, you know, a slightly step up from a 5.4. They have a whole new model that's been pre trained from scratch, ready to go. And they just had a $1 billion nonprofit pledge. This is all in seven days, right? It's been an absolutely chaotic week for OpenAI. So let's dig in a little bit more. Foreign. Moves too fast to follow, but you're expected to keep up. Otherwise your career or company might lag behind while AI native competitors leap ahead. But you don't have 10 hours a day to understand it all. That's what I do for you. But after 700 plus episodes of everyday AI, the most common questions I get is, where do I start? That's why we created the Start Here series, an ongoing podcast series of more than a dozen episodes you can listen to in order. It covers the AI basics for beginners and sharpens the skills of AI champions pushing their companies forward. In the ongoing series, we explain complex trends in simple language that you can turn into action. There's three ways to jump in. Number one, go scroll back to the first one in episode 691. Number two, tap the link in your show notes at any time for the Start Here series. Or you can just go to start here series.com, which also gives you free access to our inner circle community where you can connect with other business leaders doing the same. The Start Here series will slow down the pace of AI so you can get ahead. And I think this kind of goes into a couple of phases, right? Because ultimately I think they're number one, sharpening the core. Number two, they're shedding the side quests and number three, they're fueling the AI engine with capital. Four, they're running into some infrastructure problems. And five, I think all of this ultimately sets up for the, the new playbook. So the, the, the shedding of the side quests was a lot more than just Sora. So we also said that the instant checkout that OpenAI was demoing inside of ChatGPT, well, it wasn't really going well. And it seems like some of their biggest partners like Walmart, Shopify and Etsy all pulled away. And reportedly Walmart had a 3 times lower conversion rate inside of ChatGPT than on Walmart's own website. So instead OpenAI is now pivoting from kind of owning the checkout to instead owning the discovery. So one thing that they're going to be pushing more instead of, you know, bringing all this different, you know, merchant checkout inside of the Chat GPT, you know, new super app, whatever that may be, or in current days Chat GPT app instead bringing in a more owning the discovery. So comparisons, reviews and then routing them to the retailer. And those aren't the only side quests that died. Right? That's just what died this week. Right. But before this week we saw reports that their highly anticipated adult mode was delayed. The, their AI hardware was delayed, you know, maybe until 2027. The Stargate extension was canceled. And then you have other, you know, big splashy features from 2025, right? All the spaghetti that got thrown on the wall. These. A lot of things just haven't been touched, right? Advanced voice mode, Barely touched or updated. Agent mode made a huge splash. Barely touched or updated. So it does seem like this combination of OpenAI sharpening the core and shedding side quests just to really focus on what matters. But that's not what the narrative is saying, right? There's been this recent. I think the, the. The. The rest of the world is finally start. A very small sliver, right? Is starting to, like, understand who Anthropic is, right? If you listen to this podcast all the time, you obviously know who Anthropic is, but I think the rest of the world is like, oh, what's this Claude thing? Right? It's. It's funny. I actually got a group text, you know, from a friend group, right? Someone had just discovered Claude for the first time. But that's, that's the reality right? Outside of our, you know, AI bubble that many of us live in, most people have never heard of Anthropic. They don't know what Claude is. So I think that there's been this recent, you know, kind of surge where the rest of the, you know, non AI bubble world is figuring out about Claude. And so you have that coincidentally coinciding with OpenAI's most chaotic week ever. So this, you know, narrative that's bubbling to the surface is, well, oh, OpenAI is going to fail. They're going to go bankrupt. It's all anthropic. It's Claude. No, that's absolute nonsense. Right? Full disclosure, I love Claude. I hate their limits. Their limits stink. They have a completely different business plan than OpenAI. A lot of their features aren't as good, but I paid 200amonth for Claude, Max. Just like I paid 200amonth for ChatGPT Pro, right? It's a great product, but they're not losing to Anthropic. That's just a narrative that I think is, you know, popular to post about on social. Social media. Because Claude has. Well, they've been winning 2026 so far, right? I think hands down, Google won 2025, OpenAI won 2023, 2024, and so far, at least, it's very early. Anthropic may be winning 2026, but this doesn't mean that OpenAI is going bankrupt. And yes, we know they're burning money, but guess what? We've talked about this on the show before. Some of the most profitable companies in the history of the American enterprise burned billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars before ever becoming profitable. Right. And we've seen reports that OpenAI may not be profitable until 2030. I'm actually would say maybe before that. I am. Even though the first round of advertising in ChatGPT didn't work as well as they thought, I think with OpenAI's recent hire, which we're going to talk about here in a couple of minutes. Yeah, I think OpenAI is going to be literally printing money with their ads business anyways. I actually think that killing all of these side projects, people only see the failure. I see that as a strength because essentially what we're seeing in 2026, with anthropic winning the year, they're not winning the race, not even close, but they're winning the year. I think that's because, well, Anthropic from the beginning said we don't care about users, the total number of users. We want to own a domain, we want to own coding. Because once you can own coding, you can start to own agentic workflows, you can own the harness. And then as coding becomes better and recursive, perhaps, you know, then you can start to own different sectors of knowledge work. And I think that's where we see with Anthropic right now. And maybe this might be the first time, maybe again this could be coincidental, the timing of OpenAI preparing for an I, for, for an IPO with anthropics, you know, kind of dominance in certain sectors. Right. High value knowledge work, legal, finance, etc. Right. But it seems now like OpenAI is taking a play, taking a page out of the Anthropic playbook and saying, okay, well now we need to narrow our focus and start, you know, really doubling down in the areas that matter. You know, Sora didn't stick, shopping didn't stick, so they scraped it off the wall and moved on. And that's a good thing. So what's it mean for you? Well, expect in the future, right, when we see a, the, the new super app, you know, any, any week, any month now, I think what we will see is more product updates and I think we will see fewer kind of distractions, so to speak out of OpenAI, and I think we will see, at least for the second half of 2026, a likely more focused product line. Focus on the enterprise, focus on knowledge work and focus on those high value sectors. So more depth, I think, to the tools that you actually use in. You can tell that's coming because the money hasn't stopped. Investors, for the most part, the big ones writing the billion dollar checks, they're not dumb, right? You know, OpenAI just this week raised another $10 billion in their total latest round now exceeds $120 billion with a post money valuation of $850 billion as they prepare for their IPO. And let me just say this, right? If you don't follow things like I follow, right? So if you look at market caps of companies in the US right now with that post money valuation of $850 billion, OpenAI would be the 11th largest company in the US by market cap, right? They're technically, their Post Money valuation would be their market cap today if they were a public company. They're a private company, but they're the most valuable private company out right now. And they will be by the time they ipo, especially if it hits the trillion dollars, they'll be either the 9th or the 10th biggest company in America by market cap, right? Yes. They're not going to make money for a couple of years. And that's very normal for a company like this. And I think that you just have to follow the money even through all this, even through all the reports, you know, oh, OpenAI is shutting down. They're going bankrupt. Guess what, they're still cashing $100 billion rounds. And I don't think that's going to change. And their cfo, Sarah Fryer, did recently just say this. She said, I need to make sure the company is healthy and ready to face the public markets. Kind of alluding to all of these kind of side quests that are, you know, now dying or dead or dormant. And instead, the core business is growing and improving. And a big part of that core business will be the new super app that we saw reports of earlier this week. So, number one, I'm glad this is happening, right? I've been shouting on this very, you know, podcast that I do know some OpenAI people listen to, and I have reached out to them and said like, hey, and I know I'm not the only one, right? But I've been like, what Anthropic is doing with their desktop app is great in the Mac, right? It's one app. It has Claude chat, Claude cowork, Claude code. Very easy, very simple, right? Where right now Chat GBT has a Chat GPT desktop app. They have a Codex and they have an Atlas browser, right? I'm staring at three different, you know, icons on my doc right now. It's confusing. And what I still don't think people understand about Codex as an example, right? As Claude Code and Claude Cowork, you know, take off in a very viral way. Codex can do up until Claude this past week just kind of introduced the complete computer use where Claude can control your entire computer, which it's cool to use. I love it eats through credits, you know, or sorry, eats through tokens really quickly. But until that, you could do almost everything in Codex that you could do in Cowork or cloud code. And I don't think people realize that. And I think maybe that's a reason why OpenAI is going away from this strategy of having the three different apps and bringing it all into one roof. Because Codex is a freaking monster for knowledge work. Yeah, it's great for coding. I love, you know, I kind of go back and forth between Claude Code and. And Codex and I always use both on any project and sometimes Anti Gravity as well from Google. But Codex for knowledge work is absolutely amazing. So the super app concept is essentially they're bringing Chat GPT, Codex and Atlas, their browser, all in one. And I think, you know, what this is setting up for is just straight dollar dollar bills, y'. All. Because when you bring all of that context, right? And this new library feature, right, I said it's a little feature that they introduced and I saw that and I'm like, this is actually big, right? It's essentially a central location for any file that you've ever uploaded. But think of that across browser, across Codex and across chat GBT. So I think, you know, chatGPT and or, sorry, OpenAI is starting to lay the foundations for the future of this super app. But I think ultimately what that lead is the ability for them to make more money sooner and faster because, well, they'll be able to sell a lot of ads when they have all of that information on people. So aside getting back to the money, right, and what their CFO Sarah Fryer said about essentially having to be lean before they go public. OpenAI, we've also saw reports this week that they're offering private equity firms guaranteed 17 and a half percentage point returns to deploy AI across their portfolio companies. So they're essentially trying to buy PE lock in before they even go public. So that's what I say. I think this is the chaos before the calm, before the storm. Here's what I mean by this. It's been one of the most chaotic weeks ever for OpenAI or any tech company probably in recent memory since I've been doing this, at least with the number of just the sheer quantity of head turning moves multiple a day that you're like, what the heck is going on? Right? That's the chaos. And I think that the brass at OpenAI want the calm. They need to get to the calm before the storm, which is the ipo. Right? Because before any company goes ipo, that's when all the dirt comes out. That's when everyone comes out with their, you know, campaigns against them. So, you know, companies know it gets messy right. Before you go public. It's a huge deal about, you know, what that IPO hits at in the initial reception. So they want to have as much control on the company and its direction as possible from a comms perspective, from an identity, a brand image, everything. They want that all under wraps. So this is the chaos. They want to get to the calm and then there will be the actual storm of going public. So to get there though, they have to deliver. You know, we don't know if they're going to go public in the second half, you know, third quarter. That's what I've seen from a lot of reporting. But they may not even have the compute that they need even after they shut down compute heavy projects like Sora. So you know, Sam Altman did step down from the Helion Energy Board this way to clear way to clear the way for OpenAI to potentially enter into a massive fusion power deal. And well, maybe that's tied to the other piece of recent news that OpenAI and Oracle dropped a massive Texas data center extension and Microsoft stepped in to rent it instead. So it is interesting that Microsoft had plans, right? This is concept of well, they need more and more compute and then they had this Stargate extension lined up for more computer and they had to, well, say no to that extension. And then Microsoft came in. So a lot of people are saying, well, if they couldn't complete that, why. And maybe this fusion power deal has something to do with it or maybe it's just about the, you know, access to capital in what waves. Right. Obviously, you know, with the different hardware plays, right. We've seen OpenAI is potentially entering, entering into some custom silicon deals, you know, consumer hardware, a lot of different things they still have going on even after killing some of these side quests. But I think here's what this means for the larger AI race. The best model doesn't really matter as much anymore. Right. We talked about this on our Start Here series a couple of weeks ago. I think the harness and the tool use matters more at least versus just an actual next best model. Right. We saw reports on this new model codenamed spud that OpenAI is working on. But it's now about who has the compute, right, who is the electricity, who is the chips, who is the data centers to run it. And I think that's what we are starting to see here because a lot of the moves that OpenAI is making seemingly is to reduce the compute that they're spending on consumers and on projects that are maybe not in their long term vision to profitability or in their long term vision to an ipo. So it seems like if it's not something that's going to immediately make them, you know, riches and the niches of the enterprise or something that's going to set them up for an ipo, they're cutting it off, especially if it's compute heavy because they need to allocate those resources for other reasons. And then yeah, the whole Microsoft problem can't ignore that, right? That's another kind of big check mark that OpenAI hopes to check off in the chaos before the, the calm before the storm. So Microsoft is reportedly considering suing OpenAI over the $50 billion Amazon Cloud deal that OpenAI and Amazon entered into. And Microsoft is saying that it violates their Azure exclusivity. So essentially OpenAI and Amazon reportedly built a technical workaround to The Microsoft and OpenAI deal and Microsoft says it kind of violates the spirit of the contract. Meanwhile, OpenAI's own pre IPO investor docs name Microsoft as a potential business risk. So yeah, the partner that built OpenAI up is now maybe the partner that could potentially hold them back a little bit as they start to, you know, kind of lean in, get leaner and lean in to longer term profitability. So that one is going to be a relationship that is especially important to watch and not just for, you know, us, us AI dorks to have something to talk about at the water cooler or the next conference. That's not what I'm talking about. This is going to impact how you work because you probably don't know this, but even if you, the majority of people out there are using Microsoft 365 Copilot, right? You don't know it, but there's OpenAI models have historically run copilot top to bottom. Over the past couple of quarters, Microsoft especially inside of their apps, inside of their 365 apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. Have started to put in Claude. So the very models that are powering your day to day work might get swapped out. We don't know. This could potentially lead to a major rift between OpenAI and Microsoft. So here is the new playbook for OpenAI as we close up this episode. Kill the side quests, consolidate into one super app that's ChatGPT, Codex and Atlas, and then raise the money, lock in the enterprise, monetize the audience, secure the infrastructure and prepare for ipo. It's a very simple playbook and I think the other big thing that's going to be happening in the interim, right, aside from killing all the side quests, getting the super app, you know, going after high value sectors, is their recent hire. So Dave Duggan was hired from Meta to run ChatGPT ads. So right now OpenAI has 900 million weekly active users and their first kind of ad foray for their first advertisers in their better in their beta round had to come in with a 200k minimum ad buy. And some of the early stories so far said that, well, maybe wasn't as good as they thought, right. There wasn't exactly a lot of reporting, a lot of attribution that advertisers spending a minimum 200k might usually want. That's something to keep an eye on because I think OpenAI has had a couple of recent key hires from Meta specifically to work on the ad side of the company. So as they rotate and migrate into the super app, yes it is to make it easier for consumers, but it's too right. 90% of people are on the free plan. So that's, I don't know, I'm not great at math, but that's more than 800 million free users that if they're using this super app, I know not all of them are going to use it because, you know, a lot of people are just going to use the web. But still just the amount of advertising having all of that information in there, right? You've shared keywords with Google, you share your deepest, darkest, darkest secrets with chat GPTs and chatbots of the worlds, right? So not Only that, but two other key factors here looking at OpenAI's new playbook, but the doubling headcount by the end of the year, wild. And then literally planting a five a nearly 500,000 square foot new office in Google's backyard. Why would you do that? Well, so you can more easily, you know, the closer you are to the, to your enemy, the more fun you can have. So that'll be a another storyline to continue to watch. But more of the story here. OpenAI is not going away, right? Even with their crazy chaotic week shutting down Sora Some of their other side projects dying. All they're doing, they're getting leaner, more focused, not weaker, they're getting stronger. And yeah, it's the chaos, but I can't wait after the calm to see the storm. All right, and here's why this matters for you. Well, if you use ChatGPT, expect a more focused, more capable product, but also expect ads if you are on a free or the Chat GPT paid go plan and probably more commercial features. Right? So even if you are on a paid plan in the same way that anthropic, you know, allows you to buy credits, that's something that ChatGPT has on their business plans, I might expect that to come down to the normal consumer plans as well. If you're a business leader, the platform wars just enterprise just entered the enterprise lock in phase, you know, so you do have to think about picking your AI ecosystem now. And if you are an AI skeptic, strategic retreat is not collapse. What OpenAI is doing right now, this doesn't mean they're. My gosh, there's actually smart people out there that are like, oh, you know, Sora is dead. This is the latest sign. OpenAI is going bankrupt. I called it first, right? No, it's not how business works, right. This is a company that by today's measures is technically the 11th most value, right. Once they close out this, this funding round, their post money valuation would put them at the 11th most valuable company in the US by market cap. Those companies don't just get that valuation or that market cap by sheer luck. No, they do it because they have a tremendous business model that is a generation, generational company. And the new model, don't forget about that brand new codenamed Spud. It is ready and apparently it is going to really impact the economy, right, According to the brass there at OpenAI. So the money is raised, the workforce is expanding. Now they have to ship and we just get to watch and, well, maybe enjoy more chaos. All right, that's it for today's show. Taking a look and a quick ish recap. One of the wildest weeks I've ever seen for a single AI company since I've been doing this and for daily for three years. So like I said, even if you're not an avid ChatGPT user, even if you're just a novice, whatever happens as the result of this week I think has long standing impacts across not just the AI industry, but the tech sector as a whole. So if you learned anything, if this was helpful, right, our team puts a lot of effort into keeping you up to date, trying to give you and maybe sometimes I put my opinion in there, but I try to keep this unbiased and just give you the facts, some of my opinion and let you decide. So if that's helpful. If you're listening on the podcast, please click that subscribe button and follow the Everyday AI show whether you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Then if you're on the live stream, repost this. Tell tell someone who needs to know this what's going on. You can be the smartest person in AI at your company when you go to our website, your everydayai. Com. Go sign up for the free daily newsletter. Thanks for tuning in. 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And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit your everydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.
Everyday AI Podcast – Ep 742: OpenAI's Most Chaotic Week Yet? Sora's Dead, New Models are Coming and What it Means for You
Date: March 26, 2026
Host: Jordan Wilson
This episode provides an in-depth analysis of OpenAI’s unprecedentedly turbulent week, unpacking a rapid-fire series of major announcements, pivots, shutdowns, and strategic moves. Host Jordan Wilson outlines why these rapid-fire developments—most notably the abrupt end of the viral Sora video app—are not evidence of collapse but rather signs of strategic focus and preparation for a potential trillion-dollar IPO. Listeners receive practical takeaways on how these shifts might impact their own use of AI, as well as the broader landscape for businesses and enterprise AI.
Sora, the standalone AI video app, was shuttered just six months after its launch due to excessive compute needs and insufficient user impact.
The high-profile $1 billion Disney deal tied to Sora also dissipated—no money changed hands—but marked the end of a splashy partnership.
Jordan’s take: This is not failure but a sign of discipline. Sora was “brain rot”—ultimately more viral fad than productive tool for most knowledge workers. Jordan praises Sam Altman for following through on a promise to reassess Sora if it didn’t change lives within six months.
“If Sora didn’t improve people’s lives in six months, they’d readjust. And here we are less than six months later and well, it’s gone.” (09:21)
Microsoft threatening to sue OpenAI over the Amazon cloud deal (March 18)
Announcement of a merger of ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas into a “super app” (March 19)
Scrapping of ChatGPT’s in-app shopping/instant checkout experience in favor of product discovery (March 20)
Plan to nearly double OpenAI’s workforce from 4,500 to ~8,000 by year-end (March 21)
Hiring of a Meta executive for OpenAI’s ad business; launch of a Library feature
Revelations in pre-IPO docs: Microsoft seen as a risk; Altman steps down from Helion Fusion board; massive new Mountain View campus leased in Google’s backyard
Another $10 billion raised, bringing total fundraising round to $120 billion and OpenAI’s valuation to $850B—preparing for a possible $1 trillion IPO
“OpenAI made more moves in seven days than most companies make in a year. But essentially they’re just killing what isn’t working and going all in on ChatGPT and its new super app platform.” (03:30)
“Shedding side quests” means shutting down not just Sora, but also the failed instant checkout feature, delaying the much-talked-about “adult mode,” hardware projects, and the Stargate extension.
Jordan’s perspective: Streamlining isn’t a weakness—it's a strategic move mirroring tactics from rival Anthropic, focusing on owning key domains (like coding) rather than chasing feature proliferation.
Key Insight: Most of OpenAI's splashy 2025 features (advanced voice modes, Agent Mode) remain stagnant; the company is now consolidating and focusing on its core strengths.
“I actually think that killing all of these side projects... people only see the failure. I see that as a strength.” (27:56)
ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas are being merged into a single desktop “super app,” mimicking Anthropic’s unified experience with Claude.
Enterprise and knowledge work are at the core of OpenAI’s strategy—future features will be deeper and more targeted at high-value sectors.
New Library feature: Central location for all uploaded files across apps—a small but significant step for knowledge workers.
Advertising and monetization: OpenAI recently hired for ad business expansion, prepping for massive ad-driven monetization as 90% of users are on the free plan.
“The super app concept is essentially they’re bringing Chat GPT, Codex, and Atlas, their browser, all in one. And I think... what this is setting up for is just straight dollar dollar bills, y’all. Because when you bring all of that context... the ability for them to make more money sooner and faster because...they’ll be able to sell a lot of ads when they have all that information on people.” (42:06)
Microsoft, OpenAI's biggest backer, is threatening legal action over a $50B Amazon cloud deal it claims violates Azure exclusivity.
OpenAI’s pre-IPO investor docs name Microsoft as a business risk. If the partnership fractures, it could affect enterprise users, as Microsoft is already swapping Claude models into 365 apps (Word, Excel, etc.).
Takeaway: Watch for potential model-provider swaps that may impact user experiences.
“The very models that are powering your day-to-day work might get swapped out. This could potentially lead to a major rift between OpenAI and Microsoft.” (53:00)
Compute—not just model quality—is now the battleground.
OpenAI’s kill-offs are about conserving compute for profitable/IPO-aligned projects.
Fusion power and hardware ventures: Altman’s stepping down from Helion may tie into future energy deals, custom silicon, and expanded data center efforts.
“The best model doesn’t really matter as much anymore... it’s now about who has the compute, the electricity, the chips, the data centers to run it.” (48:58)
On pivoting aggressively:
“Personally, I see...a company that threw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall throughout 2025 to see what stuck and is finally clearing all, is honing its focus in on its core products as it prepares to potentially go public at a more than 1 trillion dollar valuation.” (01:49)
On Sora’s demise:
“I said for the most part, Sora is brain rot. Yeah, it’s cool, it’s fun... but you had to sign up for a specific app to use it and the app was essentially just AI videos on repeat.” (10:44)
On the effect for business leaders:
“If you are a business leader, the platform wars just entered the enterprise lock-in phase. So you do have to think about picking your AI ecosystem now.” (1:03:40)
Advice to skeptics:
“Strategic retreat is not collapse. What OpenAI is doing right now... this doesn’t mean they’re going bankrupt. That’s not how business works... They do it because they have a tremendous business model that is a generational company.” (1:04:36)
| Time | Segment / Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:15 | Episode theme: OpenAI’s chaotic, pivotal week | | 06:44 | Sora app shutdown & Disney deal collapse | | 17:56 | Timeline rundown: All OpenAI key moves in 7 days | | 27:56 | Shedding side projects and why it's a strength | | 36:23 | Enterprise focus; Anthropic’s rise; ChatGPT’s super app | | 42:06 | Implications of a unified super app for users and ads | | 48:58 | Compute as the new battleground in AI | | 53:00 | Microsoft-OpenAI tensions; potential user impact | | 1:03:40 | Practical takeaways for business leaders & AI skeptics | | 1:04:36 | Closing thoughts: Strategic retreat, not collapse |
Jordan Wilson concludes that while the past week looks like chaos from the outside, it is in fact a sign of OpenAI’s rapid maturation and strategic recalibration. The company is shedding distractions, doubling down on core products, readying a unified “super app,” securing massive funding, and bringing in new leadership for monetization. Far from being on the brink, OpenAI is fortifying for the next phase of the AI race—a race where enterprise adoption, infrastructure, and compute capacity matter more than viral features.
“All they’re doing, they’re getting leaner, more focused, not weaker, they’re getting stronger. And yeah, it’s the chaos, but I can’t wait after the calm to see the storm.” (1:06:08)
[End of Summary]