Topic

OpenAI

A collection of 14 issues

Messaging Opportunity and Group Chat Dynamics

OpenAI has started piloting group chats for ChatGPT, initially in Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan. It’s a simple idea with potentially big implications: bring multiple people and the model into the same conversation so the AI can search, summarize, draft, compare options, and keep a running context

The appeal of conversational commerce

First things first, let’s define “conversational commerce”. When you ask queries to an AI model or chat bot about something you want to buy, and based on the AI’s research you then take decisions and complete the purchase by ordering the product on the retailer’s website, that’

The Great Decoupling of Labor and Capital

A programming note: I initially wanted to cover Microsoft’s earnings today, but I am changing the schedule a bit as I felt more inspired to write today’s piece. Almost two decades ago, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was the first tech company to exceed $100 Billion annual revenue threshold in 2007.

ChatGPT's value capture problem

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine traveling back to February 2023, the moment OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT Plus subscription for $20 per month. At the time, ChatGPT felt revolutionary despite its profuse hallucinations. There was no deep research (which would be launched two years later); it couldn’t access real-time information

First impression of ChatGPT Agent, and apps on ChatGPT

OpenAI has been at the forefront of AI narrative these days to the extent it is difficult to keep track of their press releases and their implications. So, I first want to go back and discuss something that they launched almost three months ago: ChatGPT Agent. In their launch post,

OpenAI's admirable pace of iterations

I often see people admonishing Google for literally inventing the transformer architecture and yet not being able to productize it before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. We may not have to wonder about the hypothetical scenario where Google would be today if they were the ones who launched “ChatGPT” first. Exactly a

Nvidia and OpenAI's Gambit

A programming note: I will publish my Deep Dive on ASML tomorrow. As a reminder, I only send one email per day; therefore, on the day I publish my Deep Dive on a company, I won’t publish anything else. Early this year, I remember looking at Nvidia’s consensus

How people use ChatGPT and its implications, Portfolio Change

There was a lot of chatter about an NBER working paper “How People Use ChatGPT” yesterday. Unlike most survey work or academic paper looking into this question, what differentiates this paper is it is written by people at OpenAI. As you can imagine, there is a treasure trove of interesting

The Promise and Pitfall of Agentic Commerce

We are entering the age of agentic commerce, where autonomous AI agents, acting as our digital deputies, will navigate the endless aisles of online stores, evaluating products and making purchases on our behalf. Agentic commerce promises to crush search frictions and expand the practical consideration set from a handful of

ChatGPT's Edge, Tech Talent Retention

GPT-5 had bit of a mixed reaction. I was initially excited about the much cleaner UI (no more selecting models; to be fair, I was using o3 for 95% of my queries anyway). However, it didn’t take me too long to realize GPT-5 is “thinking” considerably less than o3