I’ve always considered my friend Keith Teare a bit weird. Maybe it’s living in Palo Alto amidst the tech plutocracy. But I wonder if the That Was The Week weekly tech news publisher has finally lost his mind. In this week’s conversation, he speculates that OpenAI will soon be worth $10 trillion while its closest competitor Anthropic, will be valued at $5 trillion. Has he finally gone totally bonkers? Or is it really possible that these two still private companies will be collectively worth $15 trillion (more than the GDP of every country except the U.S. and China) in a few years?
1. AI Valuations Have Entered Fantasy Territory OpenAI at $10 trillion and Anthropic at $5 trillion would make these two private companies worth more than the GDP of every country except the U.S. and China. Even tech insiders are now seriously discussing valuations that would have been laughed out of the room during the dot-com bubble.
2. We've Hit the AI Search Tipping Point Traditional Google search is rapidly being replaced by AI-powered alternatives like Perplexity's Comet browser and specialized AI tools. About 25% of internet users now regularly use AI instead of search engines, fundamentally threatening Google's advertising-based business model.
3. San Francisco's Tech Boom Is Back (Again) The AI revolution has revitalized San Francisco as the undisputed center of tech innovation. Real estate prices are soaring, rentals are impossible to find, and the talent war has reached late-90s intensity levels as AI companies compete for engineers and office space.
4. The AI Race Isn't Winner-Take-All Unlike previous tech cycles where one company dominated (Google in search, Amazon in e-commerce), the AI market appears big enough for multiple giants. Anthropic has emerged as OpenAI's strongest competitor, with Chinese AI models also becoming serious contenders on the global stage.
5. Big Tech's AI Panic Is Real Facebook is paying billions in bonuses to attract AI talent after their latest model failed to impress. Apple is sitting out the expensive AI infrastructure race, betting they can integrate others' AI into their devices. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has decided to avoid regulating AI development entirely.
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