No Mercy / No Malice: The Resistance Comes for OpenAI

Every soda's got something to say. Colas brag. Probiotics give Ted Talks. Then there's mister Pibb. No pitch, no promises, just bold cherry bringing the flavor. Bold kick of cherry. Hey, you're mister Pibb. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose. Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention. Timberland, built on craft. Visit timberland.com to shop. On December 12, Disney plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docuseries. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Streaming December 12, only on Disney plus. A year ago, I predicted the first CEO who forcefully and publicly resisted Donald Trump's assault on American democracy and rule of law could reap significant benefits, both reputationally and commercially. Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi raised his hand. The resistance comes for open AI, as read by George Hahn. Sometimes you add more value going second. Tim Cook and Satya Nadella did not found Apple and Microsoft, but each took the wheel and increased their company's market capitalization tenfold. Last week, Dario Emodi went first in pushing back on the Trump administration, refusing to let the Department of Defense dictate the policies of a private business. But in what may be the most undercovered story in tech, Satya Nadella may have changed the political landscape following his lead. The flow of capital concentrates around good stories. Entrepreneurs deploy narratives that capture imaginations and capital, pulling the future forward. Narratives also work in reverse. Last month, a piece of science fiction masquerading as a research report wiped out $300,000,000,000 in market value by describing a near future scenario where AI led to 10% unemployment, consumer spending collapsed, markets cratered, and the economy was fundamentally altered. More recently, Anthropic CEO Dario Emodi, demonstrating that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, deployed a narrative that turned a $200,000,000 contract dispute into a branding event that added $150,000,000,000 to his firm's valuation while depositioning OpenAI. OpenAI originated as a nonprofit AI research company. Its mission sounded noble. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return, Sam Altman and his cocreators wrote back in 2015. OpenAI has since dropped the nonprofit masquerade, registering an 840,000,000,000 valuation with Altman backfilling whatever narrative maintains its hallucinogenic 34 x revenue multiple. In …