In addition to the buzz about Gemini on social media, Google is rapidly catching up with ChatGPT in user numbers. ChatGPT has more than 800 million weekly users, according to OpenAI, while Google’s Gemini app has grown from 450 million monthly active users in July to 650 million in October, according to Business Insider.
financial stakes are high
Not everyone sees OpenAI’s “code red” as a real alarm. Reuters columnist Robert Siren wrote on Tuesday that OpenAI’s announcement “reinforces the perception that OpenAI is trying to do too much at once with technology that still requires a lot of development and funding.” The same day Altman’s memo circulated, OpenAI announced an ownership stake in a Thrive Capital venture and a collaboration with Accenture. Siren wrote, “The only thing bigger than a company’s attention deficit is its hunger for capital.”
In fact, OpenAI faces an unusual competitive disadvantage: Unlike Google, which subsidizes its AI ventures through search advertising revenue, OpenAI does not make profits and relies on fundraising to survive. According to the report, the company, now valued at about $500 billion, has pledged more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to cloud computing providers and chip makers that supply the computing power needed to train and run its AI models.
But the tech industry never stands still, and things can change quickly. Altman’s memo also reportedly said that OpenAI plans to release a new simulated reasoning model next week that could beat Gemini 3 in internal evaluation. In AI, as long as dollars continue to flow, the back-and-forth cycle of one-upmanship is expected to continue.
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