BREAKING: OpenAI’s unraveling has begun - by Gary Marcus
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BREAKING: OpenAI’s unraveling has begun<br>Their planned IPO is facing headwinds, trust has evaporated, and their burn rate is only getting worse
Gary Marcus<br>Aug 19, 2026
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The opening stages of OpenAI’s unraveling, which I first warned about in January 2024 (if not before), have begun.<br>To begin with, hardly anyone trusts them anymore, which can’t be great for business.<br>Take the reaction to OpenAIs Sam Altman’s latest announcement, on Tuesday August 18 (i.e., “earlier today” for those of us on the West Coast), that OpenAI would be pausing, ostensibly for safety reasoning:
Sam Altman@sama
We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model<br>6:53 PM · Aug 18, 2026 · 173K Views
352 Replies · 108 Reposts · 1.48K Likes
As far as I can tell, hardly anyone believed him.
taoki@justalexoki
there's no way this is the real reason right
Sam Altman @sama
We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model
7:44 PM · Aug 18, 2026 · 60K Views
52 Replies · 5 Reposts · 616 Likes
The best one line translation came from the user @NIK on X:
Slightly elaborated:
Ross Hendricks@Ross__Hendricks
Translation: we need to immediately stop torching cash to provide some semblance of a sustainable business model so we can rush this IPO out the door before the bubble pops
RIP “compute shortage/AI bottleneck” bros
Sam Altman @sama
We have paused some frontier RL training to ensure that we can meet the appropriate alignment, security and monitoring standards for the new level of capabilities in front of us. Model progress is now extremely rapid, and we always said we would take action if we felt that model
7:50 PM · Aug 18, 2026 · 13.3K Views
6 Replies · 38 Reposts · 326 Likes
And, here’s where things get worse. It turns out people were very likely right to be skeptical, because The Wall Street Journal’s Berber Jin and Corrie Dribusch just dropped big news:<br>@cdriebusch via @WSJ ","username":"berber_jin1","name":"Berber Jin","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1823165387501932545/yE5SJ59J_normal.jpg","date":"2026-08-18T22:37:08.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HQCdzpJaMAAx039.png","link_url":"https://t.co/fZlM2pomTE"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":35,"retweet_count":83,"like_count":583,"impression_count":220310,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-gap-12 pc-padding-16 pc-reset bg-primary-zk6FDl outline-detail-vcQLyr pc-borderRadius-md sizing-border-box-DggLA4 pressable-lg-kV7yq8 font-text-qe4AeH tweet-fWkQfo twitter-embed">
Berber Jin@berber_jin1
openai has been tossing out a lot of vague ARR numbers, so we decided to take a deeper look.
the company grew revenue by just 18% to $6.7 billion from q1 to q2, while its losses sank further into the red
not a great sign ahead of an IPO
w/ @cdriebusch via @WSJ
10:37 PM · Aug 18, 2026 · 220K Views
35 Replies · 83 Reposts · 583 Likes
and then an hour and half later, Jin dropped still further details, also bad for OpenAI:<br>@cdriebusch @WSJ story is now updated with additional details. openai's losses grew by $3 billion from q1 to q2, to $12.3 billion\n\nnot a great look given that it added only $1 billion in revenue in the meantime, to $6.7 billion","username":"berber_jin1","name":"Berber Jin","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1823165387501932545/yE5SJ59J_normal.jpg","date":"2026-08-18T23:54:27.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":2,"retweet_count":9,"like_count":116,"impression_count":58607,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"video_preview_media_key":null,"belowTheFold":true}" class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-gap-12 pc-padding-16 pc-reset bg-primary-zk6FDl outline-detail-vcQLyr pc-borderRadius-md sizing-border-box-DggLA4 pressable-lg-kV7yq8 font-text-qe4AeH tweet-fWkQfo twitter-embed">
Berber Jin@berber_jin1
@cdriebusch @WSJ story is now updated with additional details. openai's losses grew by $3 billion from q1 to q2, to $12.3 billion
not a great look given that it added only $1 billion in revenue in the meantime, to $6.7 billion<br>11:54 PM · Aug 18, 2026 · 58.6K Views
2 Replies · 9 Reposts · 116 Likes
You don’t want your quarterly losses to quadruple right before your IPO.<br>It’s safe to say all this is good news for Anthropic:<br>on.wsj.com/4zo2o8y","username":"WSJ","name":"The Wall Street...