People are a bit too eager to jump on the emergence of ads as an indicator that things are slowing down. I view it as the opposite, mostly because of my experience with Codex 5.2 and Opus 4.5. These models are incredible. I think by some definitions they’re already AGI.

So why bake in ads? My hunch is that raising funds privately can only take you so far. To keep scaling, they need more capital and have to go public. Despite all the hype they still have to show _some_ revenue to help justify the valuation they need to keep buying hardware. They are a business after all. Ads to support the lowest tiers feel like a no brainer. People already accept them for search.

“Have you tried the new models, bro?”