> OpenAI’s refusal to launch and iterate an ads product for ChatGPT — now three years old — is a dereliction of business duty, particularly as the company signs deals for over a trillion dollars of compute.

I think this is intentional by Altman. He’s a salesman, after all. When there is infinite possibility, he can sell any type of vision of future revenue and margins. When there are no concrete numbers, It’s your word against his.

Once they try to monetize, however, he’s boxed in. And the problem with OpenAI vs. Google in the earlier days is that he needs money and chips now. He needs hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars.

Ad revenue numbers get in the way. It will take time to optimize; you’ll get public pushback and bad press (despite what Ben writes, ads will definitely not be a better product experience.)

It might be the case that real revenue is worse than hypothetical revenue.

But... They are testing ads.

Absolute silicon valley logic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

I feel like I've been hearing this same argument about unicorn startups for fifteen years now: they aren't monetizing yet because it's easier to sell the possibility than the reality. There's probably some truth to it, but I think here it misses the mark, because OpenAI is monetizing. They're likely to hit $20 billion in annualized revenue by year's end. I guess maybe he's holding off on ads because then he can say that'll be even bigger?

But honestly...he's not wrong. I think ads in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are going to absolutely dwarf subscription revenue.

> I think this is intentional by Altman.

It's the other way around. It was a non-profit before. He even got kicked out.