The Bens
Netflix vs. Hollywood • AI vs. Hollywood • OpenAI's Scaling • Sony + Netflix • RIP VR's Future of Work • Thinking Machines Tick Tock • More on OpenAI Ads • Davos • KPop
Not one, but two recent posts centered around Ben Affleck? Has it really come to this?
🍿 Hollywood Cuts Off Its Future to Spite Its Present
Netflix is obviously the best path forward for Warner Bros, you fools...
🧠 My Boy’s Wicked Smart on AI
Ben Affleck makes some good, coherent points about... AI?
I Note…
📊 Scaling with Intelligence
Given that OpenAI blog posts are always calculated (I mean, aren’t all company blog posts?), I’m not sure what to make of this post by CFO Sarah Friar. She’s making the case that they’re scaling revenue in line with compute (power generation), which seemingly is an argument for OpenAI to keep spending – or to accelerate spending. But is it, really? Because it’s also costing more to get that compute online… Is this just a state of the union to start 2026, or ahead of that next massive fundraise? Maybe both? She also subtly puts in there that both WAU and DAUs are at all-time highs, which is seemingly to combat a narrative circulating that growth may be slowing — of course, both can be true while growth rates are still slowing… She also makes the case that their business model will be multi-faceted, including the new push with advertising, but that’s seemingly there to suggest it won’t be the new main business model (as it became for Google, Meta, and others). And she hints that more layers of monetization are out there waiting to be discovered… Hope so! [OpenAI]
🎞️ Sony Re-Ups with Netflix
With all eyes on the Warner Bros deal, Netflix keeps pushing their current business forward. Given the success of KPop Demon Hunters, there was some talk that Sony might be subject to a bidding war for their streaming rights. Instead, Sony extended their long-standing deal — and expanded it to include worldwide rights for Netflix to stream their movies right after their theatrical (and PVOD) runs. Sounds like the deal is worth $7B and runs through 2032. And if Netflix completes the Warner deal, they’ll have the streaming rights to Sony, Universal, Warner Bros (and A24 via HBO Max). That would leave just Disney and… Paramount. Which you can bet Paramount will be talking about quite loudly over the next many months. [THR]
🥽 VR No Longer the Future of Work
There was a time, about five years ago, when all you heard was that Meta’s "Horizon Workrooms" was the future of work. Well, so much for that. Alongside the other cuts to the VR division, Workrooms is no more. Granted, it was the pandemic when it was hyped up, still, what a giant swing and miss. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is framing the situation as both not a big deal and also potentially a good thing. He makes a couple points worth considering — notably that the VR ecosystem was held back by Meta competing with them, but as he notes, that was also because they just made better apps and services than the ecosystem did. So by removing the better apps from the equation… Regardless, the vibes around the whole bet-the-company Metaverse bet just aren’t great right now. Hard to see how they recover. [Verge]
⏰ Thinking Machines Messy Tick Tock
If you’re looking for some more messy details around how the Thinking Machines Lab co-founder fiasco played out, this will have you covered. Feels fairly in line with my initial read: a "you can’t quit because you’re fired" situation. But that doesn’t mean Zoph was without blame. Per the reporting, a um, complicated, relationship at work (though it sounds like it actually started at OpenAI before Thinking Machines was founded!). And things seemingly did get messy from there. Meanwhile, others seemed clearly worried about the overall direction of the company. So there was some sort of impromptu meeting/ultimatum, which clearly didn’t sit well with Murati… Something, something, history repeating or at least rhyming… [WSJ 🔒]
👁️ More on OpenAI Ads
Yeah no surprise that they’re testing with ad views. As I wrote about last weekend, the click-based model is likely to be problematic for ChatGPT (and all AI chatbots) because at their best, they destroy the need to click! I don’t think the CPM model is going to be the one that works either, but it’s the easiest and most obvious one to test first. ChatGPT has a lot of users, what advertiser would say not to putting their message in front of those users will little-to-no competition? [Information 🔒]
I Quote (Davos Edition)…
"It would be a big mistake to ship these chips. I think this is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea."
— Dario Amodei, not holding back his thoughts on the notion of allowing companies like NVIDIA to legally sell their chips in China. Wonder what new Anthropic investor Jensen Huang thinks about such a statement…
"I think it was a massive overreaction in the West.”
— Demis Hassabis, when asked about the lasting effects of the DeepSeek moment a year ago (also my general thought at the time). He does note that it was "impressive" what the company was able to do with limited resources in catching up, but also notes that he feels like China is still six months behind the cutting-edge of AI models.
"It's interesting they've gone for that so early. Maybe they feel they need to make more revenue."
— Demis Hassabis, in a different interview at Davos, when asked for his thoughts about OpenAI’s ads roll-out plans for ChatGPT. No punches pulled there! He’s also skeptical about how well ads will work in such products, which is certainly an interesting thing for an executive at Google to think! (And he has some good quotes about the newly announced Apple/Gemini partnership too — one key: local models…)
"Early is a weird word because in ad models you have to be at scale."
— Sarah Friar, noting she was "surprised" by Demis’ comments in the above interview, and added, "I am trying to create as much optionality as possible." She also noted OpenAI’s first custom inference chips are being "taped out" (one step away from production).
"I think most likely, we’re looking at something latter part…"
— Chris Lehane, confirming (sort of) that OpenAI’s device is coming later this year. "I didn’t say it’s coming this year, I said we’re 'on track' (audience laughs)!" That sounds like they might announce it towards the end of the year, but it may not ship until 2027. But we’ll see, a long way to go. Still good to see/hear they’re clearly confident enough in whatever the first device is to keep talking about it openly like this…
Asides…
Elon Musk hopes to take SpaceX public by July — maybe a 250th bday present for America? Why? A new space race… space in the in IPO window, beating Anthropic and OpenAI to market and seemingly an obsession with getting cash to be the first to do data centers in space. Also maybe to buy a big(ger) chunk of xAI. Maybe SpaceX and Tesla can split ownership, until they eventually merge too? [WSJ 🔒]
Here’s a deeper dive into how Elon is apparently thinking about this space data center project/plan — including, perhaps some sort of breakthrough in terms of how to handing the cooling in the vacuum of space... [Axios]
Of course, Elon might not need the cash if he gets the um, $79B - $134B in damages he’s seeking from OpenAI and Microsoft. And that’s at the $500B valuation. If/when that jumps to $800B+… [Bloomberg 🔒]
The FTC is looking into "hackquisitions" again following NVIDIA’s $20B Groq deal/no deal. As expected… [Bloomberg 🔒]
The FTC is also appealing the Meta decision, which is strange since the first one was such an obvious waste of everyone’s time. [Reuters]
Google appealing their antitrust loss makes more sense because it delays any remedies (which they largely won anyway, but still…). [Verge]
Sounds like YouTube Shorts will be getting their own Sora-like AI likeness capabilities this year. Curious how that will go over there… [Verge]
Also Neal Mohan keeps doing Netflix favors by dismissing the notion of "UGC" being what creators do on YouTube as outdated. [THR]
And another one, with BBC striking a deal with YouTube to produce original content for the service. Notably, it will be ad-supported, which is not the case for the television channel in the UK… [THR]
It sounds like we’re just weeks away from knowing Disney’s new CEO, with an announcement said to be next month. (Though Bob Iger will undoubtedly stick around for some sort of transition period, as his contract is through 2026.) [LAT]
MTV Rewind is just awesome. Warning: you will lose hours. [MTV Rewind]
I Spy…
Just how big of a success was KPop Demon Hunters? These are Netflix’s own numbers. That number is not only over 3x the second best-performing movie on the list, it beats the last three leaders on Netflix’s list combined…
