The author weighs the cost of hoarding — controversy and gutted API revenue before IPOs, disavowed by OpenAI's CEO — but concludes that as financial pressures escalate, the previously unthinkable might become reality. ✦ AI generated
Alex Kantrowitz · Big Technology · 2026-07-31 · original ↗
Deciding to keep the latest models off limits to the public would be the AI labs' most controversial move in a long history of them. It would also likely demolish their API revenue, a real concern as they head to IPO. And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disavowed it in an interview this week. 'I want to put that in everyone's hands,' he said. 'Concentration of power with AI is a terrifying thing.' But however unlikely this scenario may seem, the one constant in the short history of generative AI is that nothing is too crazy to be taken off the table. And as financial pressures escalate, the previously unthinkable might turn into reality.
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