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E269Apr 17, 2026

OpenAI's Identity Crisis, Datacenter Wars, Market Up on Iran News, Mamdani's First Tax, Swalwell Out

Takes
9
Companies
5
Too early to call
Who weighed in
3 bullish4 bearish2 neutral
GTravis KalanickCommentary

Travis Kalanick argues that if Anthropic is funding its scale through revenue and contribution margin rather than investment subsidies, it is building a structurally superior and ultimately unbeatable compounding machine versus OpenAI.

If Anthropic is funding theirs through revenue, and other folks are funding it through investment, there's like a short-term— that's a short-term solve. But in the long run, whoever is scaling their actual usage... with contribution
FriedbergFriedbergCommentary

Friedberg argues Anthropic's release cadence and innovation pace are head and shoulders above everyone else, with his organization shifting to ~90% Anthropic usage in 6 months, indicating a powerful and accelerating flywheel.

the pace of innovation at Anthropic is, from my experience, unprecedented. I mean, they're release cadence is extraordinary. They've basically supplanted OpenClaw already with this release they did a few days ago, and then today the new Opu
SacksSacksCommentary

Sacks argues Anthropic's ~10x annual revenue growth rate (vs OpenAI's 3-4x), driven by enterprise coding focus and metered token consumption, puts it on a trajectory to be the dominant frontier model if it can solve compute constraints.

The Anthropic growth rate has been around 10x a year. So they went from, let's call it, $1 to $10 billion of ARR last year, and by the end of Q1 this year, they were already at $30 billion. Of, again, let's call it their revenue. And they'r
GTravis KalanickCommentary

Travis Kalanick argues that if OpenAI's growth rate is materially lower than Anthropic's, network effects from compute, tokens, and reinforcement learning will compound against it, making the gap increasingly hard to close.

Growth is king right now in this, in this world, in this segment. Growth is the whole damn thing. And if Anthropic is growing faster than OpenAI by a significant clip, the investors right now are going to play it forward.
SacksSacksCommentary

Sacks argues OpenAI's 3-4x annual growth rate is far inferior to Anthropic's 10x, and its prioritization of consumer over enterprise coding means it is losing the scalable revenue race and risks falling irreversibly behind within 1-2 years.

The OpenAI growth rate's been around 3 to 4x a year. The Anthropic growth rate has been around 10x a year. So they went from, let's call it, $1 to $10 billion of ARR last year, and by the end of Q1 this year, they were already at $30 billio
AllbirdsBIRD-71.0% over 2mo
SacksSacksCommentarytoo early to call

Sacks argues Allbirds' pivot to AI is reminiscent of the late-90s dot-com era name-change pump, where companies got huge valuation pops just by appending '.com,' with no underlying business substance.

This reminds me of the late '90s where all you had to do was change your name to whatever.com. And you get a huge pop in your valuation.
JasonJasonCommentarytoo early to call

Jason characterizes Allbirds as a peak-ZIRP collective delusion that was never worth billions, having sold off brand assets for $39M—about 10% of its IPO raise—before pivoting to an AI data-center shell as a meme stock.

They sold off all their brand assets for $39 million, about 10% of what they raised in the IPO. Congratulations to whoever owns those ugly-ass sneakers.
SpaceXSPCX-9.7% over 2mo
ChamathChamathCommentary

Chamath states he is personally long SpaceX and views its IPO as crucial and urgent so he can deleverage his position and take chips off the table while valuations are high.

I'm waiting for these IPOs so that I can, to be very honest with you, delever and get some chips off the table. I think that it is crucial that this SpaceX IPO get done ASAP.
Bloom EnergyBE+17.7% over 2mo
ChamathChamathCommentary

Chamath highlights Bloom Energy as a key beneficiary of data center compute constraints, noting it has gone 'absolutely straight up vertical' because its on-site nat gas power solution with low emissions lets data centers bypass years-long grid interconnection queues.

If you look at companies like Bloom Energy, it has gone absolutely straight up vertical nuclear. And the reason is because Bloom has a solution that allows you to use nat gas, that allows you to do something onsite, and critically allows