Welcome to Eye on AI, with AI reporter Sharon Goldman. In this edition, I compare OpenAI to a house made of…well, no one really knows. Also: OpenAI launches a ChatGPT app store (we’ll see if it fares better than their previous custom GPT store)…Anthropic taps Trump-linked Bitcoin miner for a massive AI power build…Anthropic’s Claude ran a snack operation in the Wall Street Journal newsroom…NOAA says its new AI-driven weather models improve forecast speed and accuracy…Google debuts a surprisingly powerful Flash version of its Gemini 3 model…and the U.K. AI Safety Institute finds that a large percentage of Britons have used chatbots for emotional support.
Talk about an expensive building project. OpenAI is reportedly raising tens of fresh billions at a $750 billion valuation, including $10 billion from Amazon. It is pouring money into compute — and literally pouring concrete into the data centers that power AI chips—which the company says it needs to keep constructing the towering stack of models and applications that more than 800 million users now rely on.
The cost has inspired both awe and deep unease. Industry observers watch OpenAI’s expansion the way they might watch the Empire State Building rise — with a budget that keeps climbing as fast as the structure itself. (The actual Empire State Building, it’s important to note, only cost about $700 million in today’s money and came in under budget.) And some skeptics are increasingly convinced that the entire edifice is a monument to hubris that will come tumbling down before long.
