Five fault lines that will decide OpenAI's future
Sam Altman was long seen as the architect of the AI age. Now the halo is cracking. The pioneer has to show that he is more than the prophet of a bubble.
Sam Altman has shaped the AI boom like almost no-one else. But now the problems are piling up: a wobbling Microsoft partnership, a disappointing GPT-5, talent walking out the door. Together with Felix Holtermann and Luisa Bomke I took a close look from San Francisco at the cracks in the industry leader, for Handelsblatt.
What it’s about
OpenAI is the most important AI company in the world – and at the same time the company with the most open construction sites. The new ChatGPT model disappointed, the partnership with Microsoft is wobbling, and several founder-level figures have left the start-up. The market valuation sits at $157 billion, with the next funding round being discussed at $500 billion. At the same time, competition is growing: Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral. We show the five fault lines that will decide the future of the ChatGPT maker.
The core problem
Sam Altman was long seen as the architect of the AI age. Now his halo is cracking. With GPT-5, OpenAI raised high expectations and only partially delivered. Users complain that the improvements over the previous generation are limited. That opens a window for the competition. And at exactly the moment when the capital need is highest – AI data centres swallow tens of billions of dollars per year.
The physical expression
OpenAI has moved out of its old headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission district. In the glass building on 3rd Street more than 3,000 employees now sit, with another 29,000 square metres leased nearby. In 2020 the company had 120 people. The brief to the architects: as few screens as possible, as much room to think as possible. The space mirrors the ambition – and the pressure on the company.
The five fault lines
We trace, in Handelsblatt, where the cracks run. First: the product, after GPT-5 didn’t deliver the expected leap. Second: the partnership with Microsoft, which is being legally renegotiated. Third: governance, after the departure of co-founder Ilya Sutskever and other key people. Fourth: the finances, because AI data centres burn tens of billions per year. Fifth: the competition, which has built genuinely serious alternatives in China, France and at Anthropic.
I wrote the full story together with Felix Holtermann and Luisa Bomke for Handelsblatt. This is a first impression.