I think OpenAI is screwed long-term, and their leadership knows it. Their most significant advantage was their employees, most of whom have now left for other companies. They're getting boxed in across every segment where they were previously the leader:

- Multimodality (browser use, video): To compete here, they need to take on Google, which owns the two biggest platforms and can easily integrate AI into them (Chrome and YouTube).

- Pricing: Chinese companies are catching up fast. It feels like a new Chinese AI company appears every day, slowly creeping up the SOTA benchmarks (and now they have multimodality, too).

- Coding and productivity tools: Anthropic is now king, with both the most popular coding tool and model for coding.

- Social: Meta is a behemoth here, but it's surprising how far they've fallen (where is Llama at?). This is OpenAI's most likely path to success with Sora, but history tells us AI content trends tend to fade quickly (remember the "AI Presidents" wave?).

OpenAI knows that if AGI arrives, it won't be through them. Otherwise, why would they be pushing for an IPO so soon?

It makes sense to cash out while we're still in "the bubble." Big Tech profits are at an all-time high, and there's speculation about a crash late next year.

If they want to cash out, now is the time.