Code Red at OpenAI, Apple’s AI Talent Shakeup, New Golden Age for Ads? | Dec 2, 2025

0:13Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Akash Pasricha. It is Tuesday, December 2nd. we have got a great show planned for you today. First up, Sam Altman is declaring code red at OpenAI over the rising threats to ChatGPT from competitors like Google. We will discuss that with our AI reporter who broke the story and our editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, in just a few moments. We'll then dive deep into the AI shakeup at Apple. The tech giant's AI leader has departed the company, and they're bringing in a new guy from Microsoft. We'll talk about what he's going to do at the company.

0:48We're then talking about some exclusive reporting that we published around Marvell's advanced talks to buy Celestial AI, a deal that could be worth more than$5 billion. It is a big deal in chip land. And we will finish with a conversation around AI and advertising with the co-founder of Highbeam, a fintech company that counts many fast-growing consumer brands as customers. It is a great show, and so let's get right on into things. It is code red at OpenAI. Sam Altman has sounded the alarm. He is calling everybody back to their battle stations. Late last night, the information was first to report that the OpenAI CEO sent out a stunning memo to the company declaring it was a critical time for ChatGPT as competition from Google and the likes becomes a bigger threat.

1:37Joining me now is our very own Stephanie Palazzolo, who broke that story, and Editor-in-Chief Jessica Lesson. Good morning to you both. It's great to see you. Stephanie, what was in this note from Sam Altland last night? Yeah. So in this memo that we were able to write about, essentially, Sam declared what he calls a code red. So he told employees that he wants them to prioritize improving Chat2BT as OpenAI faces more competition from rivals like Google. So what that kind of consists of are things like improving model behavior, personalization, image generation, speed, reliability. And to do all those things, he did admit that the company will have to deprioritize some other work streams.

2:24So this includes advertisements and AI agents. And I think what really stood out here is that this is actually one of the first times that the company has even acknowledged wanting to do ads and chat GPT, which has been quite a controversial topic. And then, of course, to kind of put all this in context, this all comes weeks after we've seen new models from competitors like Google and Anthropic that have actually outperformed OpenAI's models in certain areas. Right. Now, it's the first time that they've acknowledged the ads effort, but it's not the first time, at least in recent weeks, that we've heard from OpenAI executives about the threats that these companies face and the fact that the company might be slowing down in some ways, right?

3:05Yeah. So, and another story that my colleague Aaron and I wrote about, I think, last week, we did write that, you know, like you said, this isn't the first time Sam Altman has kind of acknowledged the rising competition in the AI industry. Last month, in the kind of weeks leading up to Google releasing Gemini 3, he also released a memo within the company kind of acknowledging like, hey, there's this really, really good new model coming out from Google soon. But we believe that we're making bets that are going to help us win in the long run. So he said that the vibes were going to be rough, right?

3:42I mean, that's what he said. Yeah. By the way, Steph, great, great stories, great scoops. Kept me up late reading last night. But what a shift, right? I mean, when that first memo came out, it was the memo was stay the course, troops. We have so many hard things to do, but stay focused. And now Code Red. And I think, you know, what's fascinating to me is, I mean, yes, the competition is intensifying, but there seems to be this sort of like messianic quest for one-upping each other on models and product, which I actually think is more important. But this idea, you know, we're caught into this race that OpenAI and others are kind of pulling us into when it also seems to me that all the models are getting better and they're all going to get really good.

4:32And maybe we should be focused more on how people are using these products and the engagement behavior. So I was really struck by that. And just a broader theme I've been thinking about. You know, for this whole 2025, we've been talking about the AI war and OpenAI and Altman have kind of been the ones stoking it. And then you kind of Gemini rolling out with some cool features and products. They kind of haven't been sucked in in the same way. And they're getting inroads with consumers. So I kind of wonder, and Steph, your thoughts, like, does, is this war mentality really? like why do you think so many leaders are turning to that in ai in this moment yeah i mean what do you think as you mentioned it is very much like this kind of back and forth where you know every couple weeks you see a lab release a new model then the next week another lab releases a model that they say is slightly better so it does kind of feel like we're stuck in this like loop of just slightly improving models versus um as you're kind of saying thinking about the actual products that are being built on them and whether those are actually useful and people are you know using those those products um i think in some ways you know yesterday's memo that sam put out is actually a bit more of a focus on product because he does he does mention you know um we have new models that we're working on they're going to be really good which you know one of them is one that we wrote about this morning but specifically the memo is also super focused on chat vt and improving that, which is obviously kind of OpenAI's main money-making product.

6:12So I think like these two memos kind of show this tension that you're talking about, where on one hand, you have this constant race to release new models. On the other hand, you can't forget about products like ChatGPT and making sure that that growth is still happening and people are still, you know, using those sorts of products. That's where they make a lot of their money from, obviously. Right. Right. I mean, Jessica, that's what I wanted to get your take on was, you know, So ChatGPT and, oh, sorry, OpenAI has really spread itself in every direction. We've written extensively about this suite of products that it has been exploring with browsers, with agents.

6:47It's got the social media feed. I mean, do you think that the company at all stressed itself too thin? And how does it balance the product thing with what Steph's saying, which is that the underlying model has to be competitive? You know, Kosh, this is the number one question I get from investors, current investors in OpenAI and people who haven't invested in OpenAI. And they look at the company. They actually don't ask me how it's going to keep raising money, which I think maybe they should ask me. But it's this question. I was sitting with a well-known investor yesterday in our office talking about this very topic.

7:22Look, on one hand, it's a model as old as time with tech companies. You plant a million seeds, some flowers bloom. You know, Google has spread itself thin again and again in its history. So, and we've talked on this podcast and the information about that's the playbook that they're using. At the same time, these aren't normal times. And I think there is a big question over what is the killer product in AI? Is it the standalone chatbot assistant and cramming more into it? Is it a more embedded, distributed intelligence across all the consumer surfaces where we already have very dominant players like email, like social, like business apps?

8:10So I think that is existential for open AI too. I tend to think focus is good, but I also understand to recruit people, you need a lot of flowers to bloom and learn. So I think it depends. But clearly Altman is trying to rally the troops. I mean, I just think these rallying cries, this war language has really been designed... Is it rare? Is this common? Is this language code-right? I mean, you could go back in the history of Silicon Valley and see many posters with such slogans. But again, the framework I keep coming back to as I look to next year in this AI battle is, Because, you know, I think this war framework, which everyone's been sucked into, the press has been sucked into, everyone has been sucked into, has been designed to raise capital and attract talent.

9:02It isn't necessarily what is going to win on the product side. And, you know, I was talking to someone recently who spends a lot of time in China. And I was saying, what's the state of play in AI? And I'm also skeptical that this China versus U.S. in AI makes any sense because we're both going to win. And both countries are going to have cutting edge AI. And yes, we should innovate. And yes, we should be as far as we can in the US. But the idea that that's not going to happen doesn't make sense to me. But this investor said, look, in China, they focus on building products. You don't hear DeepSea and Alibaba and Tencent and ByteDance talking about one-upping each other in the AI war.

9:40They're very, very focused on how people are using AI. And last thing I'll say, and Steph, I think one of the most interesting things in your memo, yes, to be prioritizing ads. I mean, what an idea. Deprioritize the revenue stream. Investors may have some questions about that or a revenue stream. Obviously not the only one. But agents. And I think, you know, when I also look back on this year, you could tell I've been doing that. You know, where are we in agents? We're seeing multiple data points of lowering expectations around agents. And now I don't, I'm not in the weeds the way Steph is to know, you know, agents are one front in business adoption of AI.

10:20They're not the whole story. But they were certainly the story that companies, everyone, you know, down the line from OpenAI to Salesforce on and on have been pushing. And I think that's another thing to watch. We saw the Thrive and OpenAI announcement earlier this week, a day ago, about a partnership with Thrive's holding company, you know, designed to accelerate maybe business adoption and agents too. But here we have Altman actively calling it out as not a priority. So I think that's something to watch as well. Right. Well, it was a big story. And Steph, I know you were late last night and you're on the road.

10:59You actually, you seem to get some of your biggest stories on the road, I think. So, I mean, look, we like having you here, but stay on the road because the stories get bigger and better every time. Thank you, Steph, for coming on. Thank you, Jessica, for joining us. We really appreciate it. We will see you both very soon. Okay. Apple is also shaking up things as it tries to compete in AI. Hi, John Ganandria, Apple's top AI exec since 2018, is stepping down from the company. Meanwhile, the company has tapped a former Microsoft and Google executive, Amar Subramania, to lead certain parts of Apple's AI research efforts.

11:33Joining me now is Aaron and Aaron. Aaron Tilly covers Apple, and Aaron Holmes covers Microsoft. Aaron and Aaron, welcome to The Aaron Show. It's great to have you both here. I am strictly going to refer to you both by last name, just like we did in high school, although nobody could pronounce my last name. So I went by Akash. Tilly, let's start with you. Let's start with the news. Walk us through your reactions to Ganondria stepping down. Was this a surprise to you? Yeah, so this wasn't a surprise at all. This had been, I think, quite a long time coming. This had really been expected by both folks internally and externally.

12:17And I mean, primarily that's because Gene Andrea struggled to fit in and work out some sort of cohesive AI strategy at Apple. Especially earlier this year, the delay of an overhauled Siri, the big sort of more personalized conversational Siri was delayed. And that was like just a big blunder for Apple after promising this. So he'd been struggling for years, and the writing had been on the wall for a while. Okay, and the writing had been on the wall, this is not the first departure we've seen at Apple with respect to AI, right? No, there's been a number of folks from their foundation model team.

12:57This is the team that would be building their version of sort of a chat GPT, their own large language models, and their head of that team, Ruming paying left earlier this year for Meta, and he took a lot of his team with him. And with his departure, there was also a large number of other folks leaving for other AI labs. So there's been sort of a long unraveling of some very important folks from Apple's AI team. Aaron Holmes, let's talk about the new guy. Who is the new guy? He comes from Microsoft. What Ramania was working on Microsoft's MAI team, which is their, you know, in-house team led by Mustafa Suleiman that's trying to train their own AI models that in theory could, you know, swap out for OpenAI's models in their co-pilot products.

13:50They've mostly been primarily reliant on OpenAI's models, but they want to be a bit more self-reliant. But his tenure at Microsoft is a little bit hard to judge. For one, he, you know, only joined the company a few months ago when he was poached away from Google DeepMind. And my understanding is that he was working on post-training Microsoft's models, which is kind of the process of tweaking the models after they've had their original training run. But since then, Microsoft has kind of teased some of their models, but they haven't actually published detailed specs or model cards, which makes it a little hard for people in the AI community to know exactly how successful their training and post-training have been so far.

14:32So he was only there a couple months. So is he like a superstar? Like, I mean, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Kind of tough to tell. Well, you know, before Microsoft, he was at Google DeepMind, which I think is seen as basically one of the gold standards of AI research, especially if you want people with experience building, you know, models and AI native products. So I think that gives him certainly like the sheen of top AI talent. And I think while he was at Google, he was working on the Gemini app, which has had a lot of different iterations over the past couple of years. But it's safe to say that that played into the decision to recruit him at Microsoft.

15:12Okay. Tilly, what's he going to be working on at Apple? He's not totally taking over Gianandria's role, right? Yeah, he's not a one-to-one replacement with Gianandria because Gianandria would report directly to the CEO. This time, the new leader, he's not reporting to the CEO. He's reporting to Craig Federici, their head of software. So really a downgrade in terms of highlighting AI and bringing the leader to the upper echelon of the company. He's also overseeing a smaller subset of the AI strategy. So the foundation model team and research AI, the AI research teams. and while the rest of the group will be broken up into different parts of the company like the operations and services.

16:02So it's really split up and divided and is not as powerful as the former AI leader. Right. And remind us, you talked a little bit about the delays in Siri at the start, but where are we in that story and how are things going over at Apple from the people you're talking to? Yeah, there's a new leader of that effort to rehaul Siri, overhaul Siri and get the overall AI product strategy back on track. They're targeting, Apple's targeted next year, probably spring to summer, they'll be releasing the sort of improved versions of these products and partnering with an external LLM instead of developing something internally.

16:47So most likely Google Gemini will be the one part of the product. So Apple will be kind of moving on from something internal, but probably long-term doing something internal. Great. Well, Aaron and Aaron, it's great to have you here. I love the Aaron show as always. The only Aaron that's missing is Aaron Wu, who covers Google. And I think it's just a matter of time before we get all three of you here. and then we can really throw the podcast listeners for a spin. Thank you both for coming on. We will talk to you very soon. Thanks. Okay. Marvell is in advanced talks to buy chip startup company Celestial AI in a multibillion-dollar deal.

17:30That is according to a new exclusive report from The Information. I want to bring on Anissa Gardese, one of the reporters who broke the news to help us break it all down. Hey, Anissa, how are you doing? Hey, Akash. I'm great. How are you? I'm good. Let's talk about this deal. Marvell is not a company that we hear too much of. It's a pretty big company, mind you. And it's actually, you know, it's a big chip company. We should be talking about them more. Who is the company that they're trying to buy? What do we know about the deal? Last night, we reported that Marvell is in advanced talks to buy a startup called Celestial AI.

18:07And we're hearing that the deal could be for several billion dollars and potentially announced as soon as today. So that's the deal. And I think it makes sense that Marvell would be looking at Celestial, but they're a very early stage company. So I think everyone's very curious why Marvell is doing a deal at this stage. So I do want to talk about that, but you just take a step back. Marvell, who is Marvell and who is Celestial AI? Because they're not NVIDIA and AMD. Right. Yeah. You might hear about Marvell a little bit less, but what's important about Marvell is that they are in the custom ASIC business, similar to a Broadcom.

18:47And so they work with companies such as hyperscalers. Amazon is one of their customers, and they help other companies make custom chips, including AI chips. And then they also have a networking business. And I think that's sort of where Celestial comes in. Okay. And this, I mean, Marvell stock is, is it's down around 20 % this year. So, I mean, what, they haven't benefited from the AI tailwinds that the rest of the chip companies have or they've fallen behind? Yeah, I think they've benefited a little bit, but in terms of the stock price, there's just been so much excitement on AI accelerators and anything that could potentially be competitive with NVIDIA.

19:29And I think Broadcom has sucked a lot of energy out of the room given its relationship with Google and how excited people are about their TPUs. And then another thing was that last quarter, by the way, Marvell reports today, but last quarter the company projected flat growth in the ASIC business quarter over quarter. And so I think that's one of the reasons that maybe people haven't been as excited about Marvell. Right. I want to get to another piece you wrote last week, but very quickly just to finish up here, are you predicting more of these types of chip acquisitions in 2026? I mean, it feels like as these chip companies try to stay competitive, we talked a lot about these chip startups a couple months ago and, you know, the funding rounds that they were getting.

20:16But I sort of see this as an inevitability, right? Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, I think this is a very early stage acquisition. There are tons of companies in the Photonics interconnect space that are also pre-revenue, pre-product. so to have a big strategic sort of take one of those players out will be very interesting to see how that affects the rest of the photonics interconnect space which you know to date has been pretty hot and makes a lot of sense of why you would invest in that if you believe in AI and AI clusters growing but you know we also saw NVIDIA buy and Fabrica a couple weeks ago and so I think you know I'm sure strategics are reaching out to all companies and we've also heard about some companies turning down offers, which we'll hopefully write about in the future.

21:05But I think the strategic players like NVIDIA, Broadcom, Marvell, even the hyperscalers, like Meta had a recent chip acquisition. They're all definitely in the market and talking to these companies. Well, let's talk a little bit elsewhere in the AI ecosystem. Next to AI chips, the next thing people love to talk about is AI data centers and infrastructure. You had a bit of a current state of play column last week that you wrote that I thought was great. It sort of talked a little bit about the mood and the atmosphere for AI data center companies and the progress on the construction of these facilities.

21:45What's the vibe right now in data center land? Yeah, it's high, high pressure because there are so many companies that have set out on these crazy fast timelines to build very, very complex, large data centers for AI. These are the kind of data centers that companies are paying billions of dollars for, you know, plans to spend even more than that in the coming years. But the mood in the ecosystem right now is that, okay, timelines are approaching. We do have to hit these deadlines. And this is an industry that involves moving physical things, getting physical people to your projects to get things done on time.

22:24And that we're seeing is proving to be challenging. That, I think, was to be expected. But given the stakes here, it's definitely the talk of the town, I would say. And there are some cloud companies that are starting to make some noise about this. Yeah, because cloud companies, their revenue is directly correlated to when they can turn their data center online and start renting out compute to their customers. And a specific example you're referring to is CoreWeave on its earnings call last month talked about how they were adjusting revenue expectations in the quarter downward because of a delay at one of their data center providers.

23:05And so delays do start to have an impact. And like when you're at the scale of a core weave, you know, you might have to start reporting delays if you don't forecast that into your projections. Right, right. Do you think this is more a case of the deadlines being too realistic or is it just that people cannot move fast enough? Which of these two ends of the seesaw, I guess, do you think are the bigger factor here right now? Yeah, I get the sense that people are moving very fast. Right. Compared to like normal times, I mean, you know, getting a data center stood up in months. I mean, that seems pretty fast, right?

23:43Exactly. Like, I think like on the whole, things are going at record speed and, you know, people are moving faster than they typically would if there wasn't like something like AI that was pushing everyone to sort of win business so quickly. But yeah, I think there are just some physical realities that companies are running into. And no one is panicking too much. But the impact here would be that delays could affect your contracts with customers or your revenue guidance and expectations. And so the market is maybe also starting to realize that these companies that are bound by physical constraints might run into issues due to the physical constraints.

24:23And so last question for you, as we sort of shift ahead to thinking about 2026, how do you think this all plays out? What are some predictions that people in your orbit are talking about with respect to these companies? One thing that people are telling me that they expect for next year is that delays will have an impact on customer contracts. And so depending on the contract you struck, having a delay could impact how much your customer pays you for what they agreed to buy. So maybe if you have a delay, someone is going from paying you$3 for the GPUs per hour to paying you$2 per GPU per hour, and that completely changes the economics.

25:05And so I'm very interested in finding out more examples there where a delay, which is kind of common and expected, could actually have some sort of impact on the economics of a cloud contract. So that is what I'm hearing for next year. Great. Well, Anissa, thanks for coming on. We really appreciate it. We'll talk to you again soon. Thanks. Okay, the rush of AI companies trying to find ways to advertise on their platforms could have big implications for brands and companies that are trying to find the best marketing vehicles to reach their customers. Joining me now is Samir Shurgill, the co-founder and CEO of Highbeam, a company that helps brands like New York or Nowhere, Cuts, and Bird Dogs manage their cash flows with all the complications of e-commerce.

25:53Samir, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks so much for having me, Kash. So let's talk about advertising. Look, we just came out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You know, I wonder what you made of some of the numbers that we saw and how you think about these dollar figures more broadly as you see them growing year after year. Yeah, it's really interesting, right? So I think that everyone can understand that consumer spending has shifted to online. And we saw this this Black Friday is about like 20 billion, I think, in total spend, which is, you know, a large number. I think what's more interesting almost is, as it relates to AI, is most of the companies that we think of as tech companies monetize primarily through advertising like Google, Facebook.

26:35And so Black Friday, while it's important to all of the consumer brands, it's just as important to companies like Facebook and Google to be able to actually reap a lion's share of their profits. And, you know, what we see going forward is whether or not you believe Facebook and Google are monopolies in the government sense of the word, they do control all the advertising spend for consumers. And so part I think what's really interesting to see as Black Friday continues to evolve is will consumer behavior shift from places like Google and Facebook to other areas? And what implications does that have for advertising and the fate of these tech companies in general?

27:10Right. Talk to me a little bit about how the economics of advertising on Facebook, on Instagram, and on all these social media platforms, how have those economics changed over the past three to four years? Yeah, it's a great question. So basically, if you think about it, at the end of the US economy runs on consumer spending, right? And of the 70 % of GDP that's consumer spending, advertising controls where and how you buy things. And for most tech companies, unless you're selling to the enterprise, and the exception is Microsoft and Oracle, but all the recent companies like Facebook and Google, they make their money through advertising, right?

27:47Facebook, 100%, Google, 80%. And they know this. And their$4 trillion valuation for Google and a$1.6 trillion for Facebook is all predicated on, can we keep all the advertising dollars flowing to us? And therefore, they're very focused on when you purchase something on your Instagram feed, does Facebook get the lion's shares of profits from that advertising? When you search for something on Google, does Google continue to monetize that? And I think we continue to see this, like, advertising revenue streams continue to be the vast majority for these companies. And I think that in terms of how that's going to shift, that's one of the big, big questions in the next five to 10 years.

28:22Like, will AI cause a shift in consumer behavior around discovery and purchase such that the advertising dollars won't flow to Facebook and Google? Maybe they'll flow to other competitors like OpenAI or other AI companies. Well, but it does sort of raise the question. I mean, you know, a lot of consumer brands really found a lot of success optimizing their ad spend on these social media platforms over the past five years, finding a way to reach customers and basically get sales profitably, essentially, using all these advertising methods. That sort of died down a bit as those platforms became more competitive to advertise on and it became more expensive, frankly.