OpenAI’s early years were defined by scarcity, experimentation, and principle. In 2016, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang personally delivered a prototype DGX-1 supercomputer, worth $300,000, to OpenAI’s modest San Francisco office. The machine had cost Nvidia billions to develop, and Huang later admitted he was stunned that its destination was a nonprofit.
“Elon was the only one who wanted it,” Huang recalled. When Musk explained that OpenAI was a nonprofit, Huang said the blood drained from his face.
The Breakup
Two Companies, Two Philosophies
The Expanding Battlefield
OpenAI and xAI are not alone.
Google, Meta, Anthropic, and others are pouring capital into AI models as the industry evolves beyond text-based chatbots toward AI-generated video, agentic systems, and enterprise productivity tools requiring vastly greater computing power.
A High-Stakes Gamble
Red Alert
Internally, OpenAI is not immune to pressure.
Altman recently declared a “red alert” inside the company, reallocating resources to focus on making ChatGPT faster, more reliable, and more personalized, while delaying work on advertising, healthcare, shopping agents, and a personal assistant known as Pulse.
