🃏 “If you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Sam Altman snapped at investor Brad Gerstner when questioned about how OpenAI could justify USD 1.4 tn in spending commitments against USD 13 bn in revenue. “I think there’s a lot of people who […] would be thrilled to buy shares,” he added on the venture capitalist’s podcast (runtime: 74:20). “We could sell your shares or anybody else’s to some of the people who are making the most noise on Twitter about this very quickly.” He added that he wishes OpenAI were public so critics could short the stock: “I would love to see them get burned on that.”

It’s a remarkable response from a CEO whose company lost USD 12 bn last quarter — combative rather than explanatory, focused on proving critics wrong rather than demonstrating that the business works. Altman frames his circular financing arrangements as necessary innovation. At a Texas data center site, he argued, “What really drives a lot of progress is when people also figure out how to innovate on the financial model.” But innovation and desperation can appear very similar… until the bill is due.

Withdrawing before the fall? Last week, OpenAI completed a long-awaited restructure, transforming from a nonprofit into a forprofit public benefit corporation valued at USD 500 bn. The move allows investors to hold equity for the first time, and clears the path for an initial public offering. Despite reports that OpenAI is preparing for an IPO at a USD 1 tn value as early as 2026, Altman denied having any specific timeline, telling Gerstner, “We don’t have a date in mind, we don’t have a board decision to do this.” But the restructuring conveniently allows the kind of liquidity event that could let early investors and executives withdraw their investments before the business model proves itself — or doesn’t.

If OpenAI can significantly improve AI technologies and expand revenue over the next several years —and if investors hold out that long — Altman’s financial innovations could prove prescient. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the AI mogul’s execution on the podcast, claiming that the company has “beaten” every business plan it provided to Microsoft.

But if technological progress stalls — or if the improvements don’t translate to paying customers — OpenAI and its many partners could lose enormous amounts of money. Smaller companies caught in the tide like CoreWeave, which are taking on enormous debt to build data centers almost entirely dependent on OpenAI, could go bankrupt. Oracle could see its USD 29 bn in forecast losses materialize. The ripples could spread across the global economy, particularly given how concentrated tech stock ownership has become. Bernstein Research Analyst Stacy Rasgon put it starkly: Altman “has the power to crash the global economy for a decade or take us all to the promised land.”

When Gerstner asked his direct question about how the numbers add up, Altman’s response revealed more than he likely intended. It was the response not of a confident leader, but of a kingpin who views scrutiny as insubordination — someone who has internalized the myth of his own inevitability so deeply that questioning the fundamentals feels like betrayal. It was also exactly the kind of response that led Ilya Sutskever to write the 52-page memo that warned of Altman’s tendency to undermine his execs. The memo cost Sutskever his position at OpenAI when Altman returned to power after being briefly ousted by the board.

Altman isn’t the first so-called visionary to go mad with power — he appears to be following in Elon Musk’s footsteps. Musk has been promising self-driving cars “next year” for over a decade. He promised to colonize Mars during our lifetime. He promised Hyperloop would revolutionize transportation. He promised that Tesla’s Cybertruck would be bulletproof and dominate the market. Both men understand that in Silicon Valley the size of your vision matters more than your ability to execute it. Both have perfected the art of making grand promises that questioning them feels like wagering against human progress itself.

And they both respond to scrutiny in the same way. Musk has spent years taunting short sellers on Twitter, now X, calling critics “ pedos,” and responding to legitimate questions about Tesla’s finances with mockery and hostility. When analysts asked reasonable questions on Tesla’s earnings call, Musk called them “boring, bonehead” questions and moved on. Musk has made virtually identical statements about Tesla short sellers for years, celebrating when they lose money, turning financial analysis into personal warfare. He even sold “short shorts” on Tesla’s website to mock critics.

Multiple former Tesla executives have described similar behavior: Musk setting impossible deadlines, pitting teams against each other, promising different things to different stakeholders, and creating a culture where questioning his decisions meant losing your job. Musk has similarly survived multiple attempts to rein him in. Tesla’s board has been criticized as a rubber stamp. Twitter’s board tried to resist his takeover, then capitulated.

The pattern repeats: initial resistance, followed by complete surrender to the visionary’s will… and inevitable financial loss.

Ironically, the feud between Altman and Musk has grown increasingly public, with Musk recently taking shots at Altman over the weekend, alleging he “stole a nonprofit.” Altman responded, “I helped turn the thing you left for dead into what should be the largest nonprofit ever.”

But Altman’s financial strategy mirrors Musk’s approach at Tesla and SpaceX — complex arrangements where his own companies buy from each other, where investors are also customers, and where the line between business and circular financing blurs. Analysts have long noted that Tesla’s stock valuation has become disconnected from actual company performance, with growth priced into the stock far exceeding financial results. And both frame financial engineering as visionary rather than what it often is: a way to keep the machine running when fundamentals don’t support the valuation.

The Musk-ification of Altman is the ultimate classical tragedy: Leader promises everything, insiders warn about his patterns, warning is ignored/punished, evidence mounts that insiders were right, leader grows defensive as reality intrudes, and the fall becomes inevitable. Et tu, AI?

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