An Inflection Point? OpenAI And Anthropic Cry For Uncle Sam

AI industry leaders, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are publicly advocating for regulatory intervention and a slowdown in AI development, citing existential risks. Mounting AI infrastructure spending has led to surging debt and off-balance sheet liabilities among major hyperscalers, straining credit markets and depressing free cash flow. Chinese open-source AI models are rapidly gaining market share by offering comparable performance at lower costs, especially after U.S. firms shifted to usage-based pricing. OpenAI and Anthropic, the primary drivers of AI data center buildout, remain deeply unprofitable, with OpenAI delaying its IPO to 2027.

The article below examines what could be behind the AI doomsday narrative that has started to dominate headlines here in September.

There has been a notable change in the zeitgeist around AI over the past ten days. It all started when an ex- OpenAI ( OPENAI ) safety employee quit a similar position at Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) and