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‘For Better or for Worse’ in AI commitments. OpenAI & Anthropic. ARD #141

Author
Michael Parekh AI: Reset to Zero
9 hours ago
8 MIN READ

Today’s theme is ‘For Better or for Worse’. The vow phrase, and it always applies to our AI companies, because the biggest moves they make are commitments: made up front, with the outcomes only knowable later. Especially at today’s pace of this AI Tech Wave.

Two commitments at OpenAI today: a new revenue chief at a $40 billion-plus run rate, and a new memory feature that watches your daily work on your Mac. And one at Anthropic, where the commitment is literal: the CEO’s marriage, profiled because it touches the company. My take on each, my Overall Take, then a Gadget AI on the new China drone tariffs, and your questions.

(1) OpenAI’s New Revenue Officer, at a $40 Billion-Plus Run Rate

MP TAKE: OpenAI wants its primary status back versus Anthropic, which changed the Coke versus Pepsi ranking with its enterprise AI Coding success: $50 to $60 billion in revenue pace as of mid-year by my read, with early investors floating $100 to $120 billion by year-end, as I covered in yesterday’s ‘Through the Roof’ in AI Valuations. OpenAI recommitted to enterprise and AI Coding with Codex, says about half its business is already enterprise, and still carries the broader ambitions: a billion-plus ChatGPT weekly users, AI devices, the other ‘side quests’. The new revenue chief works on a shorter time fuse than ever, right ahead of the trillion-dollar-range mega-AI IPOs for both companies. For better or for worse.

The details, per Bloomberg: Dali Rajic, from Alphabet-owned cybersecurity firm Wiz, becomes the SECOND new chief revenue officer in less than a year, succeeding former Slack CEO Denise Dresser, as Brad Lightcap, Fidji Simo and Kevin Weil also depart. The same day, Bloomberg reported OpenAI’s run rate topped $40 billion, roughly double year-end 2025, growing over 20% month-over-month in July with business revenue up 32%.

Sources:

For longtime readers:

(2) ChatGPT Now Remembers What You Did on Your Mac

MP TAKE: this has an echo of Microsoft’s Recall: Copilot tracking everything on your PC with screenshots, the backlash, the rework. Meta had its own backlash on keystroke tracking. It is not at all clear that people, in business or as consumers, are comfortable having their daily computing tracked, and very few companies have earned that TRUST: I have argued Apple, and potentially Google, are near that threshold, but not quite. OpenAI is trying a new tactic, and only its paying customers, about 5% of the billion-plus weekly users, get the feature, since personal memory takes real compute spend. Early days, for better or for worse, and likely emulated down the road.

The particulars, per The New Stack: ‘Computer History’ for ChatGPT Work and Codex on macOS, opt-in and OFF by default, captures interaction events rather than screenshots, stores the memory locally with per-app exclusions, and answers questions like ‘what was I debugging yesterday?’

Sources:

For longtime readers:

(3) Anthropic’s ‘First Lady’: The CEO’s Spouse, Profiled

MP TAKE: normally I would not discuss a CEO’s spouse in a business Substack or podcast. Here, Dario Amodei has involved his spouse, Camilla ‘Cami’ Clark, in many Anthropic business events and decisions, so her background is relevant: an entrepreneurial history, and prior relationships with billionaire investors like Eric Schmidt, whom she introduced to Dario for Anthropic’s clout-lending early investment. Remember, Dario’s sister Daniela is the company’s number two, and the company has SEVEN co-founders in total, all from OpenAI, with equal shares. The close people around this CEO are influential in everything the company does: key-person risk and governance, ahead of a trillion-dollar-range mega-AI IPO. All for better, or for worse.

The piece, The Information’s Big Read, calls her ‘the first lady of Anthropic’: no formal role, yet involved in his security and public persona, managing the family investment strategy, and once seeking to raise a fund, ‘the Mother of AGI’, that the co-founders, including Daniela, opposed over the personal relationship.

Sources:

For longtime readers:

MP Overall Take

These three events highlight the non-financial, qualitative matters that can make a world of difference to business strategies and goals, especially ahead of the big IPOs facing both companies, and especially on the revenue run rates, cadence and timelines investors will grade going forward. Much tougher to put into a model to determine the optimal risk and reward. Yesterday was the quantitative side: the multiples and the trial balloons. Today is the other half of the ledger in this AI Tech Wave: the vows. They matter in a big way nevertheless, for good and not-so-good outcomes down the road. For better or for worse.

Gadget AI: New Tariffs Target China Drones

MP TAKE: expecting these policies to quickly accelerate a US drone industry is potentially over-optimistic in the short term. These ecosystems take years to develop and the capital budgets are massive; the majority of the world’s drones come from China’s DJI and peers, while the few US startups like Skydio focus mostly on military applications, where the venture money has gone. Near term this means higher costs and fewer options for US companies, especially those building applications on top of drones, AI-driven or not. For better or for worse, we pay the toll up front. In the Q&A: the optimistic case is US solutions emerging, with more time and capital than the policy postulations envision; the worry is that drone-based tech and AI innovation here takes years longer than other markets.

The rundown, per the FT: 100% tariffs on ‘particularly sensitive’ drones (over 25kg or thermal imaging), 25% on the smaller tiers, from the White House and Commerce, building on the FCC’s December import ban I covered in the ‘Whack-a-China-Drone’ Gadget AI a few weeks back.

Sources:

For longtime readers:

Today’s AI-RTZ #1178 is on the AI Compute crunch at ground level (part 3). Tomorrow it’s the Saturday Weekly Roundup, AI-RTZ #1179, and Sunday the Bigger Picture, AI-RTZ #1180. Have a wonderful weekend!

Full Source Reading

For the broader context, see the canonical sources for ARD 141, in today’s narrative order:

Event 1. OpenAI’s revenue chief and run rate

Event 2. ChatGPT Computer History

Event 3. Anthropic’s ‘First Lady’

Gadget AI. China drone tariffs

Clips from today

Clip 1. OpenAI’s New Revenue Officer

The second new CRO in under a year, at a $40 billion-plus run rate.

MP Take: catching up to Anthropic, on a shorter time fuse than ever.

Clip 2. ChatGPT Remembers Your Mac

Computer History: opt-in memory of your daily work, stored locally, no screenshots.

MP Take: the AI trade, habits for help. Very few companies have earned that trust.

Clip 3. US Drone Tariffs: The Homegrown Gap

100% and 25% tiers land on a market China supplies and the US mostly does not.

MP Take: ecosystems take years and massive capital; the gap does not close by proclamation.

Clip 4. Drone Tariffs: Paying the Toll Up Front

The take-close and the Q&A: optimism, time, and capital.

MP Take: for better or for worse, the toll comes first.

An impact of the AI Tech Wave worth tracking. 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.)





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