OpenAI

A new drug takes 10 to 15 years and roughly $2.6 billion to go from lab bench to pharmacy shelf. Most candidates fail. The process is brutal, expensive, and maddeningly slow — especially if you’re one of the millions of people waiting for a treatment that doesn’t exist yet. On April 16, 2026, OpenAI decided it wanted to fix that. The company launched GPT-Rosalind, its first AI model built specifically for life sciences research — and in doing so fired a shot directly at Google DeepMind’s long-standing dominance in AI-powered biology. Named after Rosalind Franklin, the scientist whose X-ray crystallography work was essential to discovering DNA’s double helix, this isn’t just another ChatGPT update. It’s OpenAI’s declaration that the future of drug discovery runs through AI. ...

The company building the machines that might replace your job now has ideas about how to make that transition less painful. Whether you trust the fox to design the henhouse security system is another question entirely. OpenAI dropped a 13-page policy paper called “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” proposing four-day work weeks with no pay cuts, a public wealth fund giving every American a stake in AI growth, and shifting the tax burden from labor to capital — including potential “robot taxes.” ...

There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the timing. OpenAI is barreling toward what could be the most anticipated tech IPO in a decade — a valuation north of $1 trillion, 900 million weekly users, the kind of numbers that make Wall Street salivate. And right in the middle of that momentum, Florida’s attorney general just dropped a bomb. On April 9th, Florida AG James Uthmeier announced a formal investigation into OpenAI and ChatGPT, citing concerns about child safety, national security, and the chatbot’s alleged role in a mass shooting at Florida State University. Subpoenas are coming. The stakes couldn’t be higher. ...

Remember when ChatGPT just answered your questions without trying to sell you anything? Those days are officially over — and OpenAI is counting on it to the tune of $100 billion. OpenAI has told investors it expects $2.5 billion in advertising revenue this year, scaling to $100 billion by 2030. That’s building an ad business in four years that took Google and Meta decades to create. This isn’t some side experiment. This is the company that kicked off the AI revolution fundamentally reshaping how the internet makes money. ...

Forget another chatbot upgrade. The biggest story in AI right now is that the machines are starting to build themselves. Not in the Terminator sense — nobody’s assembling robot armies in a garage. But in a quieter, more consequential way: AI systems are writing the code, optimizing the training runs, and designing the infrastructure that powers their own successors. And the companies behind them aren’t hiding it. They’re putting it on product roadmaps. ...

OpenAI’s next flagship AI model is codenamed after a potato. And it might be the most important thing the company has built since ChatGPT. Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, confirmed on the Big Technology podcast that Spud has finished training. It’s not an incremental GPT-4o update. It’s an entirely new base model — nearly two years of research condensed into what Brockman calls a “major step toward AGI.” The timing is no accident. Spud lands in the same week as OpenAI’s $122 billion fundraise, the death of Sora, and Anthropic’s alarming Mythos leak. Welcome to the most consequential week in AI this year. ...

A company that didn’t exist a decade ago is now worth more than JPMorgan Chase, Visa, or Samsung. And it’s not even public yet. OpenAI just closed $122 billion in a single funding round, locked in an $852 billion valuation, and casually dropped that it’s pulling in $2 billion per month in revenue. If you needed proof that the AI era’s economic engine is real — not just vibes and venture capital fairy dust — this is it. ...

When OpenAI launched Sora to the public in late 2025, it felt like the future had arrived. Type a prompt, get a cinematic video. Disney signed a $1 billion partnership to let users create videos with Marvel and Star Wars characters. The hype machine was running full throttle. Six months later, Sora is dead. And its demise tells us more about the real economics of AI than any earnings call ever could. ...

When Masayoshi Son makes a bet, he doesn’t do it quietly. The SoftBank founder swings for the fences — sometimes spectacularly (early Alibaba), sometimes painfully (WeWork). His latest move might be the most audacious yet: a $40 billion unsecured bridge loan, announced March 27, primarily to fund SoftBank’s massive stake in OpenAI. Forty billion dollars. Unsecured. Twelve-month repayment window. This isn’t corporate financing. It’s a signal flare. The Loan SoftBank secured the loan through JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and four major Japanese banks — Mizuho, SMBC, and MUFG among them. No specific assets pledged as collateral. Matures March 2027. ...

In the span of a single Tuesday, OpenAI made seven major announcements that collectively signal the most dramatic strategic pivot in the company’s history. They killed Sora. They torpedoed a billion-dollar Disney deal. Sam Altman stepped away from safety oversight. A mysterious new model codenamed “Spud” was revealed. They raised another $10 billion. They launched a $1 billion foundation. And they quietly scaled back their ChatGPT shopping feature. That’s not a news day. That’s a controlled demolition of everything OpenAI used to be — and a rebuild around something much bigger. ...