OpenAI's Altman Declares 'Code Red' on ChatGPT: Reports

Watch OpenAI's Altman Declares 'Code Red' on ChatGPT: Reports - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

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00:00OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declaring code red. According to a memo seen by multiple outlets,

00:05Altman sent a company-wide message stressing the need to improve chat GPT as Google gains ground.

00:11Bloomberg's Tom McKenzie joins us now. Tom, we've seen a slew of memos reported on

00:16from Sam Altman talking about increasing concern about the competition from Google in particular.

00:23How much are they taking this seriously? How much are they innovating in a way

00:26where they could keep an edge versus some of their better funded peers?

00:31And it does, Lisa, speak to that funding story that you just touched on there,

00:34the need to have those deals, the need to raise capital, have that liquidity and raise debt as

00:39well for OpenAI, which does not have the balance sheet, of course, of the likes of Alphabet and

00:43needs that liquidity and that funding to spend not just on the infrastructure, but to ensure that

00:48there is adoption of their products and particularly GPT. So, yes, they are taking this very seriously.

00:53To your point, there was a memo put out on Monday, according to the information on this red alert

00:58that Sam Altman is now issuing across the company because Gemini is now so good. Gemini 3.0. It's

01:04been incredibly well received within the developer community, within the AI ecosystem, and the uptake

01:10is there. Google is also able to embed its own models into its products, get it into the hands of

01:16users very quickly, and it's proving effective. And they are seeing the user growth, just as the user

01:21growth, it seems, for OpenAI is starting to slow. So that race between, if you have four or five

01:26horses that are out front, then, of course, Sam Altman and OpenAI was straight out of the gates

01:31November 2022. Gemini was on the back foot. Google was on the back foot. They had their own red alert.

01:37Now they are very rapidly catching up. And that is where the emphasis is now. That is where the

01:41concern is. So it seems like Sam Altman is telling the business, telling OpenAI and the team

01:45to focus front and center on their GPT models. And they say there's going to be an update

01:50potentially next week to rival Gemini 3.0 and to walk back maybe from some of their adverts,

01:55their efforts around advertising, maybe for some of their agentic push as well, because they need

01:59to get the primary product right. And they need to make sure they're not losing that customer,

02:03the growth that they've seen that they think could lead to revenues of $10 billion this year,

02:07possibly 20 billion next year, and possibly 30 billion the next year on 2027. That's all dependent

02:12on the continuing growth and uptick amongst individuals and corporate consumers as well.