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OpenAI pivots from "do everything" to "please someone pay us for something" [1]

['Jason Weisberger']

Date: 2026-03-17  

Burning cash like there is no tomorrow, facing mounting pressure from Anthropic, and a growing pile of abandoned side projects, OpenAI is rethinking its strategy, if it can even be called such.

The company that launched a video generator, a browser, hardware ambitions, and even a TikTok-style app is now telling employees it needs to stop chasing "side quests" and focus on business users: i.e., the ones who might actually generate revenue, or maybe they mean their porn generator.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, previewed the changes to employees in an all-hands meeting, telling them that top leaders including CEO Sam Altman and chief research officer Mark Chen were actively looking at which areas to deprioritize. They expect to notify staff about the changes in the coming weeks. "We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests," Simo told staff last week, according to remarks reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. "We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front." … "We are very much acting as if it's a code red," Simo told staff in the all-hands. "I don't think necessarily declaring codes for everything makes a ton of sense." WSJ

Turns out "we'll figure out the business model later" is not, in fact, a business model.

Previously:

• OpenAI CEO reduces childhood to a power bill

• Open AI CEO Sam Altman is either disingenuous or as dumb as a rock

• OpenAI in open panic over Gemini's sudden dominance

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/03/17/openai-pivots-from-do-everything-to-please-someone-pay-us-for-something.html

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