What happens to OpenAI competitors that can't make similar moves is another question.
You cannot determine it's a waste if the effort isn't completed, and if you have no insight into their progress.
You also seem to be implying in your comment that the orion glasses displayed at connect last year were a last minute pivot, which is a ludicrous statement
Ive's company is going to make some forgettable, overpriced, and easily cloned wearable pendant or something equally irrelevant. Windsurf (and Cursor) will quickly fade into irrelevance as IDEs are once again commoditized by open source.
Which, when you think about it, is really kind of sad. They would have been so much better off as a non-profit.
Core to OpenAI's strategy is that they control not just the models, but also the entrypoints to how these models are used. Don't take it from me, this is explicitly their strategy according to internal documents (https://x.com/TechEmails/status/1923799934492606921).
Some important entrypoints are:
- Entrypoints for layman consumers: They already control this entrypoint due to ChatGPT, the app. They have a limited moat here because they are at the whims of the platform owners, primarily Apple and Google. This is why they are purchasing Ive's startup.
- Entrypoints for developers: They acquired Windsurf, and are actively working on cloud development interfaces such as the new codex product.
- Entrypoints for enterprise: They have the codex products as described above, but also Operator, and are actively working on more cloud based agents.
A rebuttal that I anticipate to the above goes something along the lines of this: "If they have so much capital and dev experience, why are they acquiring these businesses instead of building internal competitors? This is a demonstration of their failure to execute"
The current AI boom is one of the most competitive tech races that has ever occurred. It is because of this, and particularly because they are so well capitalised that it makes sense to acquire instead of build. They simply cannot afford to waste time building these products internally if they can purchase products much further along in their development, and then attach them to their capital and R&D engine
Paying for Jony doesn’t seem like desperation. Jony has no product that makes money, this is a long term aggressive hardware play. Seemingly to face off with apple.
It feels more like people just want to craft a negative narrative about OpenAI and use the data to fit that
“This is a sign of OpenAI’s weakness”
I think this is the third time I’ve seen this exact comment at the top of a HN post about an OpenAI announcement.There is a weird amount of emotional investment in not wanting OpenAI to win.
Personally, I am just excited to see what the device looks like. The prototype must be good to justify this valuation.
Also its normal backlash - when something gets so popular so fast, you are going to naturally have some haters.
Lastly actions speak louder than words. OpenAI used to talk about AGI and Super AI and nuclear launch codes and national security. Now they are buying VS Code forks and ad companies.
The AI race is more than heating up and Sama knows it and he's throwing some hail mary's in hopes to keep OpenAI near or at the top.
Altman is desperately trying to use OpenAI's inflated valuation to buy some kind of advantage. Which is why he's buying ads, paying $6.5 billion in stock to Jony Ive, and $3 billion for a VSCode fork created in a few months.
Almost anything makes sense when you see your valuation going to zero unless you can figure something out.