> IMO pivoting to ads is a sign of core weakness for OpenAI.

Yeah, I've had the same thought for a while now. You don't sell investors on an endeavor for 10s of billions of dollars with the endgame being "sell ads". If that was the endgame then there are a lot less resource and capital intensive ways to get to it.

Given all of the discourse of "you need this new tech in your life to continue to participate in society", I would not have expected them to need to stand on the roadside trying to get people to buy low cost fireworks. It smacks of going through the sofa for loose change so you can make rent.

And if they had something impressive coming down the pipeline I would think they could get someone to spot them a few billions yet, unless the billionaire/megacorp economy is really that tapped out.

> You don't sell investors on an endeavor for 10s of billions of dollars with the endgame being "sell ads".

Google is a multi trillion dollar ads company. So is meta.

Don’t underestimate ads.