OpenAI’s 2026 Priority, Disney’s AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble

0:00OpenAI is going big on enterprise in 2026. Disney brings the magic to AI video creation. The AI infrastructure trade is wobbling hard after tumbles from Oracle and Broadcom. And Meta Super Intelligence team is at odds with the rest of the company, or is it? That's coming up right after this. The truth is AI security is identity security. An AI agent isn't just a piece of code. It's a first class citizen in your digital ecosystem and it needs to be treated like one. That's why Okta is taking the lead to secure these AI agents. the key to unlocking this new layer of protection, and identity security fabric.

0:37Organizations need a unified, comprehensive approach that protects every identity, human or machine, with consistent policies and oversight. Don't wait for a security incident to realize your AI agents are a massive blind spot. Learn how Okta's identity security fabric can help you secure the next generation of identities, including your AI agents. Visit Okta.com. That's O-K-T-A dot com. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love.

1:18It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. We are going to go inside a meeting with OpenAI Sam Altman and top editors and media CEOs in New York to tell you what OpenAI is planning for 2026. We're also going to discuss OpenAI and Disney's big deal and what it means for AI content creation in general.

1:58We're also seeing some tumbles in the AI infrastructure trade. So we'll talk about what that means. And of course, we're going to talk about this fascinating story from the New York Times that says Meta Super Intelligence team is at odds with the rest of the company. And we will do our best to dissect the wording in that story and tell you whether that's actually true or not. So joining us as always on Fridays to do it is Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan, great to see you. Welcome back. Good to see you. When I am able to do weird things with Mickey Mouse on Sora, thanks to this new Disney and OpenAI deal, I will declare artificial general intelligence.

2:34So I'm ready. I'm ready. Is it a problem that my first thought when I saw this OpenAI Disney deal was like, I'm going to go straight to Sora and try to get a video of Mickey Mouse doing some form of illicit drugs? I didn't do it. I knew that the content filter would get me, but that was my initial desire right off the bat. But we will do it. We will do it very soon, thanks to this deal. Or will we? All right. So we're going to get into that in a moment. But let us begin our podcast this week by bringing you into the Rosemary's Midtown on Monday around noontime. And there at Rosemary's Midtown, a fine establishment near Grand Central Station In New York City, Sam Altman had lunch with editors and CEOs from places like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

3:27This is a group that included, according to my reporting, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, Fortune editor-in-chief Alison Chantel, and many others. and this group sits around for a unwieldy and wide-ranging conversation and sam altman is his typical disarming and charming self and the most interesting thing that happened at this meeting outside maybe of remnick asking sam altman if he felt like oppenheimer which we can get to is they asked what is the priority going to be for open ai and what altman said uh according to a couple of people who I've spoken with who know what was said in that room.

4:12Altman said that if not the top eight, a very big priority next year for OpenAI is going to be enterprise, building AI for businesses, which is interesting because if you think about OpenAI, it's been about a 70, 30 % split, 70 % consumer, 30 % enterprise. Anthropic has really been the company that's led in enterprise. But the category is the fastest growing software category in history. It's expected, according to Gartner, to bring in$37.5 billion in revenue next year. Enterprise AI, that's up from zero in 2022 or effectively zero in 2022. Ranjan, turn it over to you. What do you make of this news?

4:51Is it the right decision from OpenAI and did it surprise you at all? Well, I have very strong thoughts on this given long time listeners will know I work for writer.com and our focus is enterprise AI and work with a number of Fortune 500 companies. So I have a very clear view into what this world looks like. When I heard this news, it's definitely it makes for a splashy headline. But all it did for me is kind of just affirm the lack of focus, the lack of focus we talked a lot about for OpenAI last week. Are they going to develop an AI cloud? Is it going to be a consumer devices company, any of the above.

5:29They did just hire the former Slack CEO. So that's obviously they're making moves into this. But to me, the most interesting part of this headline is that Sam Altman, that's what he said, rather than any of the other things that OpenAI is saying. I can definitely get into what I view is going to happen in the enterprise world with AI next year. But specific to Sam, it just felt like another off-the-cuff comment at that moment for whatever was on his mind at that time. All right. I'm going to disagree with you strongly here, not only because I'm the one that wrote that splashy headline. I know.

6:05This is a big technology scoop, which we'll link in the show notes. But for two other reasons. One is Greg Brockman, the OpenAI co-founder, looked at the tweet that I shared of my story. And he sort of triple confirmed it and wrote enterprise AI is going to be a huge theme of 2026. I don't think that's an off the cuff thing. And then also this week, and we'll get into it in a moment, but OpenAI had a new model ship. It's called GPT 5.2. And GPT 5.2 is all about helping you do a better job of working with AI for business use cases. And that includes examples where you could prompt a workforce planning sheet, do a better job with to-dos, do better, deeper enterprise applications.

6:59So it is interesting. I hear your lack of focus, right? Are they a consumer company? Are they a data company, a robotics company? Are they doing this with Johnny Ive? Are they enterprise? But I think they're really serious about enterprise. And I'll just say one thing and turn it back to you. So this is why it makes sense to me from a logical standpoint. This is a very big business. And, you know, ChatGPT has done a good job making the money. They're going to make maybe$20 billion this year or have a$20 billion run rate at the end of the year. But they're going to need to show substantial revenue growth next year.

7:33And one way to do that is by attacking this enterprise area, which is where the money is. No, I agree it's going to be the biggest opportunity of 2026. And again, that's talking my own book as well. But what I genuinely believe is going to happen is the way cursor and AI coding just completely exploded this year, I think is going to pass on to business end users and enterprises are going to actually see the promise of AI that has been there for the last few years and has not been realized. So I do believe it's a massive opportunity. But what I was thinking about when I read your story is, you know, how did Google approach this?

8:15How did Microsoft enterprise first from the beginning and then kind of working their way towards some kind of consumer applications? Google going in the opposite way, having just a massive consumer business and then building Google Cloud into this behemoth. But OpenAI is trying to do everything at once. And I don't believe you can't give up the consumer business and to try to do this in parallel when enterprise is a completely different beast. And again, you have the Slack CEO, but who's going to get the final word over any decision? When Sam Altman wants to do AI erotica to actually juice engagement numbers, that's going to freak out every enterprise CIO.

8:56Who's going to get the last word on that? Well, that's a great question. By the way, we did get some clarity about when AI erotica is coming sometime next year. Most important. We can all look forward to this. Mickey Mouse, Moken Weed, and AI erotica. This is the future we want, okay? And enterprise AI. I mean, if you can bundle it all together. But OK, it's the same engine that that does it all. So maybe that is an exciting thing. But it is it is a good point. When you sell to enterprises, you need to build out an enterprise sales infrastructure. This is something that took Google like what a decade to do with Google Cloud.

9:30It's much easier said than done. And open eyes can have to figure this out. And I got a call today even from someone who works in enterprise AI sales and was like, what do you think is how do you think they're going to build out a team there? And I'm like, that's like the core of the core problem that they're going to have to deal with. So we'll see what happens there. But let's go, let's actually look at like why they might have made this shift. So maybe it's about money, but maybe it's about something else because it does come on the heels of Google's Gemini effectively equaling and some might say surpassing and surpassing in some ways.

10:03Let's just say it's Google's Gemini is basically on par with with with GPT right now, the GPT models. Here's my thesis. OpenAI had been working on like effectively what it believed could be a straight shot towards AGI, which it believed it could lead. Then an interesting thing has happened in the second half of this year. First of all, even though models are improving, you're starting to see the limits of the model. It's not broad improvement anymore. It's improvement in specific areas. And the second thing that's happened is the models have commoditized. So you've had both no straight shot to AGI and the models are commoditized.

10:43And that means that the real competition is going to be based off of the applications here. And actually, interestingly, in the lunch, what Sam Altman said was it is not a training problem. It is an application problem. It's not about the model's intelligence. It's about building the applications to get the most intelligence out of them. And so that is, I think what we're seeing right now with these developments is open AI. And I think everybody else in the AI world is realizing that you are maybe not going to get that far developing a better model because they are starting to tighten up. It is all about productization.

11:21And that's why they've hit this point. They see that AGI isn't going to solve or even smarter models won't solve all the problems. There's just some limits there. And now they're going to the application front. That's why you see the enterprise use case as the one bubbling up out of that company right now. I'm sorry. Can you repeat that, Alex? Because I'm smiling here because as anyone who listens regularly knows, this question of product and application versus the model. For a long time, I've been on team product. And it's nice that Sam is finally coming around. Alex, are you coming around? Are you team product now?

12:01Well, it's so interesting because I was on CNBC this week and I was asked, you know, now that Google has what might be a better model, does that mean Google's won or is winning the AI race? And I bottled up my pride. I took a gulp. And on national television, I said this. Isn't the issue who has the better model? And right now the marketplace is saying probably Gemini. So I would say it absolutely isn't who has the better model right now. I think right now what matters is what you do with that model and how you distribute it. I might have to shut off my laptop and just my work here is done. I'm done.

12:47I mean, so specific to OpenAI in this case, though, I still feel this is kind of Sam saying things. Because that cannot be the bet. You can't raise this much money and say all of these things for so long and then just kind of about face and just go. And I say this recognizing OpenAI has been great at the product layer. I think I've always believed that's actually been one of their stronger suits in terms of like they innovated on, they created the chat UI and made it a thing. So they have strengthened that. But I mean, if that's the case, they're not worth what they're supposed to be worth, just simply.

13:31Like as an application company, they're not open AI. They're not worth that. So I think like it's still surprising to me again. That's why I'm like not thinking fully through these statements and just kind of like reacting at that moment is how I feel and read this. Okay, so I want to both explain why I've come along to team product for the moment and explain what's happening, what I think is happening with OpenAI, and it's not as dreadful as you think. Okay, I've come along to this, the product now matters more than the model, because previously when I was on team model, we were seeing real gains when the models got better.

14:11And when the models got better, they could just do more stuff and they hallucinated less. And you're even seeing that with a little bit with the way that this GPT 5.2 model has been designed, that it can do more things for enterprise that it previously couldn't. But it wouldn't be a real stretch for me to say that top line improvement of the models is leveling out, that effectively we're not seeing those giant leaps. and when you don't see those giant leaps, you basically have started to lose this promise of like, well, we're just going to get to AGI and then AGI is going to solve everything. At this point, you have a model that's, you know, the frontier models are very intelligent.

14:53And at this point, what you need to do is take that intelligence and channel it into different applications for business. And I think OpenAI could be worth the valuation, even if it and I'm really this is funny because I'm really channeling you here even if it doesn't get to AGI it could really merit the valuation because if it makes its models valuable and applicable in many different professions that's where it's going to see the economic boost we just spoke about this on Wednesday with Malia Russell from Business Insider doing an entire episode about how AI can change the legal field that's just one you know professional services area.

15:32And as these applications get better, can it do it for consulting? Can it do it for accounting? Can it have similar applications in research? Can it have similar applications in medicine? All this is on the table now. And if it just adds that level of application and orchestration on top of the very smart models that it has today, maybe that's where it becomes this economically valuable powerhouse that it's been expecting to be. Your thoughts? Two questions. One, why did Sam Altman, when he was talking to Brad Garstner and had that kind of outburst and talk about like, don't question our revenue, we're going to get to 100 billion 28.

16:10Like, why didn't he say enterprise? He mentioned AI cloud consumer devices. He did not say enterprise at the time. that i can't tell you we can we can we both agree that whatever sam did on that interview was maybe he was having a bad day because he saw that google was getting good which we've surmised here um but let's not take that as the official okay okay that you know that's number one tantrum as the official product policy of open ai now now number two sam says 100 billion in 2028 in revenue how do you see that breaking down? Because I had asked this and we got a very good reaction from listeners and around this question of when you say 100 billion, and I've looked for reporting, haven't seen anything around, what are their actual projections about what their business looks like and breaks down, especially as all these new ideas, the pharma idea, drug development that Sarah Fryer had mentioned, like it's clearly on their mind.

17:11You got to have some plan. It's December 2025. If you're talking about two to three years now, there's some plan in place. What do you think that business is going to look like at 100 billion? Well, I've told you that, like we asked like, where did they get these projections from? And I think that's used. They've been sprinkling some fairy dust on an Excel spreadsheet and hoping that gets them there. I don't know. I don't think they know exactly what's going to go there. I think they're betting that rapidly that they've bet it previously that, you know, you scale up these models, you add more data, you add more compute and you will get rapidly rapid improvement in your ability and your ability to do things with these models and they will lead to economic activity.

17:56So I don't see how they get to that number that quickly because once we both know this, because you're working in this, I've done reporting on this. once you get into enterprises, what happens? Even if you have a product that works really well, you have to engage in business transformation and even worse approvals. And that does not move fast. That's what I'm saying, that if that truly is the path to, let's say, 2027, the amount that they're going to have to build the infrastructure, which I'm sure they are starting to with the hiring of Denise Dresser. But still, that's a big bet. If pharma revenue from drug development and partnerships, you got to hire people.

18:36You got to like build out that entire business. So if they're really getting to this point where these are true businesses that they want to build in lines of revenue, it's not just product at all. It's not even just application, as you said. Yeah, it's a whole business plan. It's people. It's a sales force. It's all of this stuff. So that's the part that until I hear or see more concrete things, it's just tough to read. in terms of like what they're actually thinking on this. Again, it's clear this is a bet based on the hires, but how they're actually, where this sits in the Mickey Mouse smoking weed on Sora or whatever else in the totem pole of priorities within OpenAI, it's still unclear to me.

19:23So I actually asked Fiji Simo, we had a press call with her about this new model. I asked her how important enterprise is to the company. She says enterprise is absolutely critical for us. We take our breakthroughs and turn them into intelligence that's useful for people. And the professional space is a huge driver of creating value and turning that intelligence into usefulness for the world. So they are into this. But where does that sit next to ads? Well, ads are paused. But I think you're hitting on the real issue here. and this is something i also brought up to fiji because i asked her a two-parter as you do on these things as you do as one does how important is enterprise and and now here's the risk when you design for enterprise if enterprise is really what you want uh how do you then make sure that the chatbot that's so popular is still something that regular people want to use for consumer use cases.

20:25Here's Fiji's answer. She said, you're correct that some things are different between enterprise and consumer. We think that increasing intelligence overall benefits everyone and raises all boats. If we're building a personal assistant, it's going to be more important to figure out how to do shopping, how to do travel, how to do all of these things. Whereas on the enterprise, we are much more focused on complex long horizons and ambiguous tasks. I remember GPT-5 was viewed by many as a personality downgrade over chat GPT-4. Now, maybe that's because it's not as sycophantic, or maybe it's because, you know, when you ask it what the weather is out, it asks you, do you want me to like find five places where you can find an umbrella nearby?

21:09Clearly, there's a balance between making something economically valuable and usable for enterprise and also making it personable. This is why I believe they're really going to have to separate those two models out. But that's the risk is you might have this cannibalization effect where you go for enterprise, but then your 800 or 900 million weekly users who are using ChatGPT as a personal, whatever, consumer application are like, well, I don't want to use this. Go somewhere else. And Gemini had been working on making a warmer assistant over at Google. That's actually a really good point. Like, let's take those two things, the sycophantic nature and the follow-on annoying engagement tactics.

21:47Neither of those will work in the enterprise. Again, like, even though I'm sure every business user wants a sycophantic assistant, still, at a certain point, you have to get the right answer. Or you have to, like, be led in the right direction as opposed to simply the one that you already wanted to go to. And if you don't, there will be negative outcomes. in terms of like user engagement, would you like five additional things? Like that kind of stuff just won't fly because when someone wants to do something, it's just, please do this work for me, get it done and let's move on. Not, I want to just sit here and kind of be pulled into this rabbit hole of engagement.

22:24So trying to develop the product simultaneously in those two directions, which they kind of have to, it's tough, it's tough. And she, I mean, she even said they want it both, they want it both ways. So it's clear they're shooting for that. I think eventually they're going to have to split out into separate models. I mean, are you going to have the same? I mean, people are going to do this. They're going to have relationships and they're going to have cyber sex with their chat GPT. And they're going to ask it to like organize their files. Like, I think you might need two separate windows for that stuff.

22:58I'm just going to leave that one there. I'm just saying, I'm not saying I want this to happen. Let's be realistic. This is going to happen. This is from Wired. uh fiji on the call said the company now plans to roll out its adult mode in the first quarter of 2026 uh altman had previously indicated users over 18 would be allowed to have erotic conversations with chat chip bt so for anyone who's looking forward to that just wait till q1 we're almost there just a few more days put the countdown clock on and again advent calendar until you can... ChatsyPT erotica. All right. We're going to go to a break.

23:38We have to gather ourselves here. Let's go to a break. When we come back from the break, we're actually going to talk about another piece of the puzzle, which is, again, if ChatsyPT, if OpenAI is going to be developing for enterprise, what does that mean for its consumer products? And what is Disney now getting involved with? Because Disney and OpenAI came to a very big agreement. This week, we'll cover that. We'll cover the AI build-out. We'll cover meta right after this. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping.

24:11Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

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25:31For more information, see the episode description. At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast, Friday edition. We're going to talk about this Disney and OpenAI deal. Before we do, quick promo on Wednesday, this upcoming Wednesday. I'm going to have a conversation with none other than Jim Cramer from CNBC about the state of the AI bubble and whether it's a bubble, the AI trade, the market, his takes on personal investing.

26:12It's going to be a really fun show. So definitely stay tuned for Wednesday. And then one more thing, it is the giving season. And if you feel like giving back to big technology podcasts, we're always happy to get five-star ratings on Spotify or Apple podcast. That's a solid you could help us with in this holiday season. It will help us book better guests. I got real close to landing some magnificent seven CEOs in 2025. I think we'll get there if we show that we have a big audience. And of course, five-star ratings and reviews are the best way to show it because they're the only publicly available metric that these companies can look at in terms of a podcast size.

26:51Okay. With that being said, let's talk about this Disney and OpenAI deal. It's from the Wall Street Journal. Disney on Thursday announced a blockbuster deal with OpenAI to invest$1 billion for an equity stake in the Chachapi Teammaker. As part of the deal, OpenAI will license more than 200 characters from Disney so users can create AI-generated videos in Sora. Through the three-year licensing arrangement, fans will be able to generate videos of themselves surfing with Stitch off the shores of Hawaii or wielding a lightsaber in front of R2-D2. Ranjan, are you excited about this? How do you feel about this?