I’m paying special attention to the details around AI at the World Economic Forum event in Davos. But the most interesting thing so far in AI in 2026 is that the internet is increasingly questioning the business model of companies like OpenAI. Recently OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said in a blog post on Sunday that the company's annualized revenue has surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion in 2024 with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. Anthropic’s meanwhile has hit a run rate of already $9 Billion and will increase faster in 2026. Anthropic is a full six years younger than OpenAI.
Generative AI skeptics like Gary Marcus are going even more viral in 2026 while Ed Zitron has built a growing reputation built on OpenAI skepticism and AI Bubble explorations. But against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, the tweet length shots of Marcus or the Bible length passages of Zitron’s own anxious persuasion aren’t necessarily the best evidence of today’s AI reality.
The FT reported this week that speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pontificated about what would constitute such a speculative bubble, and said that the long-term success of AI tech hinges on it being used across a broad range of industries — as well as seeing an uptick in adoption in the developing world where it’s not as popular. The data on this adoption is not actually very good as we will dissect further major CEO survey that recently dropped.
While OpenAI will push out its ChatGPT enabled earbuds later in 2026, its comes on a rather grim backdrop of adoption. It’s not clear if ChatGPT’s so-called 800 million “weekly” active users will care, compared to the smart glasses from Google, Apple and Meta. But let’s take a step back into that adoption problem.
Adoption rates of Generative AI in real companies and OpenAI’s own losses aren’t adding up into a very coherent path to profitability. The financial numbers are bleaker than you can possibly imagine.
OpenAI's computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024 that came with a price tag that it’s not clear when OpenAI, if ever, will able be able to afford as Oracle takes on incredible risks of things like long-term Datacenter leases.
The Microsoft-OpenAI Files paint a bleak picture of Microsoft’s role in pushing OpenAI into a lack-lustre product company that cannot even deliver good products. New court filings offer an inside look at one of the most consequential relationships in tech and how things can go terribly astray. On one hand we have OpenAI CFO Friar saying OpenAI will focus on practical applications of ChatGPT, while in the same week they push more into ChatGPT “adult mode”. It’s a stark and comical contrast.
“For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,” Nadella said. The “tell-tale sign of if it’s a bubble,” he added, would be if only tech companies were benefitting from the rise of AI.
Of course in 2026, that’s exactly what we are seeing. Outside of use cases like coding and at law firms. Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney wrote advertising, Ads in ChatGPT, could be a $25 billion business for OpenAI by 2030. The problem is of course that’s not nearly enough compared to how gigantic OpenAI’s losses are going to widen into as it descends into the valley of death in the 2026 to 2029 period.
