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Prof G Markets

OpenAI's Week From Hell — And Why Anthropic Is Winning

04 May 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What challenges did OpenAI face this week?

0.031 - 22.941 Scott Galloway

Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part?

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23.382 - 51.752 Scott Galloway

Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo.

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Chapter 2: How did OpenAI's missed targets affect its market value?

52.232 - 78.84 Scott Galloway

It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

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82.01 - 101.851 Ed Elson

Hey, it's Francis Lam, host of the Splendid Table podcast. Every week on our show, we celebrate the intersection of food and life. And this month, we're releasing a new series called Culinary Masters. It highlights some of the most iconic people in the food world. And we're revisiting conversations with people who have fundamentally changed how many of us cook and think about food.

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102.372 - 106.095 Ed Elson

People like Jacques Pepin, Claudia Rodin, and Tony Bourdain, to name a few.

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Chapter 3: What legal issues is OpenAI currently dealing with?

106.436 - 130.5 Ed Elson

You can listen to this special series now. Just search for the Splendid Table in your podcast app. Today's number 30. That's the percentage of Gen Z people who believe they are psychic. Ed, does Forrest Gump belong to Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen Z? I'm not sure. Nope, he belongs to Gen A. Wow, that really moved Claire. My favorite part was the nope.

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132.843 - 134.765 Scott Galloway

It's not a transition from what he said.

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134.805 - 140.873 Ed Elson

Is that I'm not sure you said nope? No. Nope, Gen A. Gen A. Gen A. Gen A, yeah.

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142.945 - 153.542 Unknown

How was your interview with Ray Dalio?

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153.822 - 160.933 Scott Galloway

It was great. He's got the same perspective he usually has, but I mean, he's been right about a lot of things.

Chapter 4: What does Anthropic's rise mean for the AI industry?

162.055 - 173.353 Scott Galloway

But yeah, we had an excellent discussion. Had a great discussion with Gil Luria as well. Talked about the tech earnings, which was interesting, which we'll get into as well. It's been a good week. Good week for the show.

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173.513 - 189.422 Ed Elson

You know what I really enjoyed? I don't listen to your work, but I accidentally stumbled across it yesterday. I listened to the guys talking about AI and power, the grid. I thought that was really interesting. You should check out the podcast. I like to watch it because I find you handsome.

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190.6 - 194.485 Scott Galloway

That's good. I'll take that. I'll take that. A criticism and a compliment.

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Chapter 5: How did big tech companies perform in their recent earnings reports?

195.065 - 197.368 Scott Galloway

We're net neutral. I'm happy with it.

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197.528 - 210.444 Ed Elson

I found myself putting Rewind a lot to try and understand it. And I also want to announce that we are transitioning to a power inference GPU AI center company called Quince.

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211.185 - 234.681 Scott Galloway

Quince AI. Quince AI. I love it. We're pulling an Allbirds right after the live tour, which is happening in 23 days. We're going to be in San Francisco. We're going to be in LA. We're going to be in Miami. We're going to be in Chicago. We're going to finish in New York. We're so excited. So please go get your tickets at ProfitingMarketsTour.com if you want to come see us.

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Chapter 6: What insights can we gather from Meta's earnings performance?

234.661 - 237.105 Scott Galloway

It'll be a great time. I think this is your first tour, isn't it?

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237.165 - 247.921 Ed Elson

It's the first time you've been on a live podcast tour, right? It's our first together. Yeah, we're super excited, and we have guests lined up for all of them. So it's going to be a lot of fun.

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248.001 - 279.495 Scott Galloway

All right, Ed, should we get to the news? Let's do it. Today we're discussing OpenAI's week from hell, also big tech earnings, and also a bailout of Spirit Airlines. So let's get into it. It was a brutal week for OpenAI with a string of setbacks putting the company under pressure. A Wall Street Journal report revealed the company missed both key revenue and user growth targets.

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280.176 - 295.971 Scott Galloway

At the same time, OpenAI's legal battle with Elon Musk kicked off. centered on claims that the company abandoned its original nonprofit mission. And adding fuel to the fire, families of victims from a mass shooting in Canada filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman.

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Chapter 7: Why shouldn't the government bail out Spirit Airlines?

296.472 - 318.128 Scott Galloway

The families allege that ChatGBT played a role in the shooting and that its safeguards fell short. Taken together, These moments highlight three core criticisms of the company, questions about the company's financial durability, also concerns around Sam Altman's leadership, and ongoing doubts about its commitment to safety.

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318.228 - 344.79 Scott Galloway

So kind of a trifecta of bad news here for OpenAI, Scott, which we are going to unpack now. We should probably start with this Wall Street Journal report, which I have to say was a little bit vague. We didn't really learn much from this. But there are two concrete revelations that we did learn. One is that OpenAI missed its goal of a billion users in 2025.

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344.83 - 368.323 Scott Galloway

And two is that they also missed on revenue. We don't actually know what the revenue number was. We don't actually know what the revenue target was. All we know is that they missed it last year. and the reaction from the stock market was pretty severe. A lot of companies that have agreements with OpenAI in some capacity fell really hard on the news.

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368.383 - 375.91 Scott Galloway

So Nvidia fell 4%, Oracle fell 6%, CoreWeave fell 7%, SoftBank, which is a major investor, fell 12%.

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Chapter 8: What are the potential implications of government intervention in failing companies?

377.011 - 397.453 Scott Galloway

If you add up the amount of market value that was erased because of this one report from the Wall Street Journal, it came out to nearly $400 billion. which is roughly half of the entire value of OpenAI. I'm going to ask you a question, Scott, but it looks like you're getting changed. It's so hot in here.

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397.533 - 407.404 Ed Elson

We're not used to it. London is struggling with a sweltering 65 degrees today. Anyways, I'm sorry. Trillions of dollars lost market cap, OpenAI.

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407.604 - 431.245 Scott Galloway

Exactly. Well, $400 billion in market value was erased of other companies. And so we don't know what the value of OpenAI actually is because it's private. We can sort of get a sense from secondary markets, which aren't as liquid and aren't as sensitive to timing. But the point being, they missed on this, according to the Wall Street Journal, and other tech stocks were not happy about it.

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431.546 - 433.89 Scott Galloway

Not a good look for OpenAI. Your reaction, Scott?

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433.972 - 456.091 Ed Elson

I think this is more of an indictment on OpenAI and Sam Altman's leadership than it is on the space, because it just strikes me if you look at the big tech's earnings yesterday, AI is just, I mean, it is growing into its expectations or it is meeting and maybe even surpassing its expectations. And by the way, OpenAI probably had incredibly ambitious internal goals.

456.873 - 484.89 Ed Elson

So my guess is the company is still doing well, just not as well. The biggest thing that's happened is that in just, I've never seen a company a recalibration of the market leaders this fast. You've never seen Pepsi overtake Coke this fast. You've never seen what was a distant number two in the eyes of the market in December become squarely the number one. So just some... some data here.

485.391 - 510.503 Ed Elson

Anthropix recently hit 30 billion run rate, and OpenAI's run rate is 25 billion. So all of a sudden, OpenAI is now the number two. And even more importantly, 80% of Anthropix revenue is enterprise versus 40% at OpenAI, and enterprise revenue is considered the white meat of this whole space. Anthropix expects to break even by 2028, two years away, versus 2030 for OpenAI.

510.483 - 533.892 Ed Elson

And what's really striking is OpenAI is expected to burn 14 times more cash than Anthropic. It just looks like that Dario Amode seems to be a better operator. And then according to Cauchy, in November of 2025, again, only what, six, seven months ago, OpenAI had a 75% chance of IPO-ing before Anthropic. And today that number's dropped to 31%.

534.253 - 562.579 Ed Elson

And the odds of Sam Altman being replaced as CEO this year are up to 37% from 14% at the beginning of the year. Essentially every company but one, Anthropic, would pray for OpenAI's problems. And that is, it's not that OpenAI isn't doing incredibly well, it's just that they've seeded the number one position to Anthropic in what feels like overnight.

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