The OpenAI Phone is Coming... With an AI Operating System

OpenAI's phone, led by iPhone architect Jony Ive, is set to launch in 2027-2028. With a goal of shipping 40 to 50 million units, we explore the implications of an AI-first operating system that redefines user interaction.

We compare OpenAI's consumer-focused strategy to Anthropic's enterprise approach, discuss the challenges of competing with Apple, and ponder the hurdles for user adoption.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 OpenAI Phone
1:28 Features and Design
3:01 AI Operating System
5:10 Supply Chain and Production Concerns
6:09 Johnny Ive's Design Influence
8:58 Market Competition and Consumer Interest
11:53 OpenAI's Strategic Roadmap
14:27 Anthropic’s Shift to Financial Services
20:20 Comparing OpenAI and Anthropic
24:39 Future of AI-First Hardware
25:40 Final Thoughts and Speculations

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Creators and Guests

Host

Ejaaz Ahamadeen

Host

Josh Kale

What is Limitless: An AI Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Ejaaz:
Okay, this is pretty insane. OpenAI is launching their own version of the iPhone

Ejaaz:
and it's shipping in less than 12 months.

Ejaaz:
Yesterday, an analyst which has the highest hit rate of any Apple product leak

Ejaaz:
dropped a report that revealed that OpenAI is building their own phone and it's

Ejaaz:
been designed by the very guy that designed the original iPhone, Johnny Ive.

Ejaaz:
They're targeting around 40 to 50 million units for year one,

Ejaaz:
which is larger than the opening sales of the iPhone itself.

Ejaaz:
Now, this is a very convincing rumor, but we wanted to investigate one,

Ejaaz:
whether this was real, and it led us down the craziest rabbit hole ever.

Ejaaz:
We pulled up Anthropic and OpenAI's job postings, and it revealed a hidden product

Ejaaz:
roadmap that we're gonna talk about on this show.

Ejaaz:
There's over 750 open roles between them, and it revealed a 24-month,

Ejaaz:
two-year product roadmap that no one else is talking about.

Ejaaz:
It didn't only confirm that OpenAI is building a phone, but it also tells us

Ejaaz:
how the companies themselves are actually building in a very different strategic path from each other.

Josh:
Yeah, I didn't believe this and I still don't believe it, but every single rumor

Josh:
is pointing towards the fact that OpenAI is building an OpenAI phone and it

Josh:
is going to be designed by the same person who is building an iPhone.

Josh:
And we kind of have a brief of generally what we can expect.

Josh:
I think most noteworthy of this most recently because that they've expedited timelines.

Josh:
So there's a high probability that one year from now, we will be holding an

Josh:
OpenAI smartphone in our hands. Now, what is it going to look like?

Josh:
What is it going to feel like? we have some loose ideas of that

Josh:
starting with the form factor it seems like they're going for the traditional

Josh:
smartphone not the screenless johnny ive device

Josh:
this isn't a pendant it's not glasses they're going for like a proper phone

Josh:
replacer so i would expect it to look like the iphone the big idea is that they're

Josh:
going to replace the operating system with an ai first operating system and

Josh:
we've always talked about how open ai is trying to build the ai first os but

Josh:
this is going to be the actual hardware in which it could be integrated on traditionally

Josh:
iPhones, you have that grid system where all your apps live.

Josh:
Yeah, we have a great, great rendering on screen. This will be fully predictive.

Josh:
So this is pending on a few things. One is that OpenAI is able to figure out

Josh:
the software stack in time, which I mean, 12 months seems like an eternity.

Josh:
I'm sure they'll be able to figure it out.

Josh:
And the other is that they'll be able to actually convince people to go and

Josh:
use this device instead of an iPhone.

Josh:
Now, this is separate from the product suite that we've mentioned in the past, where Johnny,

Josh:
I was developing earbuds or a pendant or a little puck

Josh:
that sits on your desk this is a full-blown display with

Josh:
a screen and a smartphone all integrated it seems like it's going to be built

Josh:
on top of open as cloud so i would expect memory and a lot of the graphical

Josh:
processing power to not be as important because a lot of it is going to be offload

Josh:
to open as cloud and i think this is really interesting news this isn't what i was expecting.

Josh:
I thought they were going to be the third device, like your computer,

Josh:
your phone, your maybe earbuds, but they're going for that phone slot.

Josh:
And this was really surprising for me to hear.

Josh:
But this analyst who was reporting on it, he is the most accurate Apple supply

Josh:
chain analyst in history.

Josh:
And he also seems to have a lot of other people backing him up as well.

Ejaaz:
Here's the thing. I do think OpenAI is building the third device.

Ejaaz:
They're pitching it as a phone, but it's going to act very and maybe even look

Ejaaz:
very different to an actual phone. So a few differences I want to point out from the off.

Ejaaz:
This phone is rumored to not have any apps on it at all.

Ejaaz:
You will interact directly with an AI, presumably chat GPT, and you will feed it your data,

Ejaaz:
your thoughts, your intentions, and it'll either generate apps or user interfaces

Ejaaz:
on the fly, or it'll interact with other AI agents that will conduct the research process,

Ejaaz:
information retrieval, whatever you might need for you on your behalf.

Ejaaz:
So I'm describing here two different things.

Ejaaz:
One, a completely different operating system that is more engineered towards

Ejaaz:
the AI future or AI centric world.

Ejaaz:
And the other thing is a completely different hardware component system.

Ejaaz:
If you want to start serving this, you can imagine a few different things off

Ejaaz:
the back, which is normal phones are oriented around, you know,

Ejaaz:
running video, pictures, making sure apps can run optimally.

Ejaaz:
This one is going to be oriented around inference and making sure prompts are

Ejaaz:
processed and AI agents can run locally, that your data can remain private and

Ejaaz:
a bunch of other things around that. So I've written a summary here.

Ejaaz:
It's meant to allow OpenAI to win at the operating system level.

Ejaaz:
And what I like about this is there's no other frontier AI lab,

Ejaaz:
Namely Anthropic, that is going after the vertically integrated layer.

Ejaaz:
You have Google, which plays on every single layer of the stack for AI.

Ejaaz:
You have Apple that kind of fumbled the model building layer,

Ejaaz:
but has all the distribution through their hardware components.

Ejaaz:
And OpenAI has realized that probably quite early, actually.

Ejaaz:
I have to give Sam credit for this.

Ejaaz:
About a year and a half ago, he said in a very weird tweet that now,

Ejaaz:
in hindsight, makes a lot of sense.

Ejaaz:
I am not competing or OpenAI isn't competing with other AI labs.

Ejaaz:
We're competing directly with Apple.

Ejaaz:
And that is like an OG tweet. I need to find that. But it's making a lot more sense now.

Ejaaz:
Not only is he trying to produce an iPhone competitor or a killer,

Ejaaz:
but he's trying to create a range of different devices that can ingest your

Ejaaz:
data either passively or unintentionally,

Ejaaz:
feed it to ShadGPT and make it the greatest product experience vector that he can do.

Ejaaz:
Now, a few other things, because I had an immediate question around this, right?

Ejaaz:
How on earth are they going to deliver this in the first half of 2027?

Ejaaz:
OpenAI does not have the supply chain prowess that the likes of Google and Apple already have.

Ejaaz:
Well, the answer is they're going to be outsourcing this to a bunch of third-party users.

Ejaaz:
I believe it's LockShare, which also happens to be the packaging and assembler of Meta's Ray-Bans.

Ejaaz:
Now, if that's anything to go by, I'm not feeling quite confident at this point.

Ejaaz:
But there's also MediaTek and Qualcomm. MediaTek does a lot of the high processing

Ejaaz:
packaging for a lot of the GPU and NeoCloud assemblers.

Ejaaz:
And Qualcomm has had a lot of favor in the mobile phone market.

Ejaaz:
They have like Snapdragon, which runs in a bunch of Chinese phones specifically,

Ejaaz:
but they have the scale to help OpenAI operate this at a larger extent or to match with iPhone.

Ejaaz:
And the final thing is, what gives me hope, is Johnny Ive being in the mix here.

Ejaaz:
Josh, I know you probably have some strong thoughts about this,

Ejaaz:
but I think his design touch on top of this kind of like hardware scaling bet

Ejaaz:
will give them the best shot at, you know, at least competing with the iPhone

Ejaaz:
or whatever the next iPhone is going to be later this year.

Josh:
Yeah, it's so hard to imagine I would want to put another phone in my pocket

Josh:
that's not an iPhone. But if anyone's going to design it, it's going to be the

Josh:
guy who designed the iPhone.

Josh:
And I think this post says 2028. We actually have an update today from Ming,

Josh:
the analyst who is pushing these timelines up to 2027.

Josh:
In fact, it also gives us a few leaks of kind of the specs that we could expect

Josh:
inside of this phone. And this is something that's interesting too, because,

Josh:
we already know what's going to be in this thing. And it's amazing the supply

Josh:
chain and the leaks that are able to get out and stuff.

Josh:
But basically what this is saying is that it's going to be running on all of

Josh:
the cutting edge technology that you'd expect a Frontier iPhone 19 model this year to be running on.

Josh:
They have a deal with TSMC to create those two nanometer class transistors.

Josh:
That is the current state of the art. There is nothing better.

Josh:
They're using a lot of low power components. So I think one of the more important

Josh:
things for this phone, because ambient capture is going to be so important is

Josh:
energy efficiency over raw power.

Josh:
So it seems like some of these design choices they're using are for extended

Josh:
battery life. So it can be on all the time, constantly listening,

Josh:
constantly taking information. And you have to imagine this form factor.

Josh:
The reason they decided to go with it is because it's the only one that makes

Josh:
sense to be a true assistant throughout your day to day.

Josh:
It has the suite of cameras, the microphones, it has the accelerometers,

Josh:
it has the GPS baked into it.

Josh:
That's really difficult to include in this like suite of devices like the earbuds

Josh:
with a small puck so we have a lot of information on that we also have like

Josh:
you were mentioning the suppliers who they're going to be building with i mean

Josh:
these two nanometer chips are allegedly going in production in the second quarter of this year.

Josh:
That means these are going to start being made in the next couple of months.

Josh:
And we have deals with MediaTek, Qualcomm, TSMC, and Luxshare.

Josh:
And like you said with Luxshare, they do make Metis glasses,

Josh:
but they are also Apple's number two assembler behind Foxconn.

Josh:
They've built AirPods, the Apple Watch, and an increasing share of the iPhone.

Josh:
So they're using people who are basically the best in the world.

Josh:
They're using best-in-class components. And it's hard to imagine that this device

Josh:
isn't going to be excellent.

Josh:
It seems like foxconn is also involved which i didn't realize and foxconn currently

Josh:
they build open ai stargate services and for those who don't know foxconn has

Josh:
basically built every apple device you've used like foxconn makes all of the

Josh:
iphones a bunch of ipads macbooks the whole thing,

Josh:
foxconn has been building stargate service but now they're also going to be building those.

Josh:
Johnny i've designed devices while lux share takes the smartphone build so it's

Josh:
this crazy assembly manufacturing setup that they have where like i think it's

Josh:
actually going to work If any

Josh:
company is going to build a product like this, it's going to be OpenAI.

Josh:
They have the right people in place. They have the cutting-edge products.

Josh:
I guess the question is, are you actually going to want to put an OpenAI phone

Josh:
in your pocket instead of your iPhone?

Ejaaz:
That's an easy answer for me. Absolutely, yes. But I'm also a sucker for some of the new devices.

Ejaaz:
I'm not going to replace my iPhone, but I'm going to have it next to it.

Ejaaz:
Because I want to see what this new operating system is going to look like.

Ejaaz:
And to be honest, I don't think current mobile phones are built for what the

Ejaaz:
future of AI is going to look like or function as.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, if I'm going to be interactive, like look at Siri. Do you use Siri?

Ejaaz:
I sure as hell don't. And I want to be able to use a Siri-enabled,

Ejaaz:
I don't know, chat GPT that can do things for me and access all my apps so that

Ejaaz:
I don't have to scroll and tap into them, right?

Ejaaz:
Anyway, to your question around this has to work, I'm probably not as confident

Ejaaz:
that it can work or not as sure that it can work.

Ejaaz:
Because if you look at like this stack that they're building,

Ejaaz:
there's a lot of new things here, right? So OpenAI, ChatGPT is known for

Ejaaz:
Absolutely nailing the large language model architecture, right?

Ejaaz:
That's what they've made their bread and butter on.

Ejaaz:
What they haven't proven is that they can get it to function optimally on a small enough device.

Ejaaz:
Now, if there's one thing that Apple has all the experience on is hardware optimization.

Ejaaz:
So if anyone's going to know how to run locally run models, either on device

Ejaaz:
or through private cloud, because obviously there's a lot of data encryption

Ejaaz:
stuff that needs to happen there.

Ejaaz:
Apple has all the historical knowledge and expertise

Ejaaz:
to be able to potentially pull that off open air i'm not

Ejaaz:
entirely sure number two um open ai really

Ejaaz:
is trying to define like a new uh ai stack

Ejaaz:
here like an operating system um that's not only

Ejaaz:
going to be large language models that's going to be images and

Ejaaz:
image gen now they have the world's leading image

Ejaaz:
model which is great news right so they're going to combine these two things i

Ejaaz:
think um their dual architecture allows for like a vision language

Ejaaz:
model to work with an alarm which is going to be very cool but i'm

Ejaaz:
also curious like how are they going to function with the

Ejaaz:
camera ingestion in live time like like we're gonna

Ejaaz:
use this camera very differently with maybe it's not to like take pictures but

Ejaaz:
maybe it's like to show the llm what we're doing or what we're seeing and then

Ejaaz:
it can kind of address things there's a lot of newness is what i'm i guess i'm

Ejaaz:
trying to say at and i'm not entirely sure they can pull it off but i'm hoping

Ejaaz:
with johnny ive at the helm and again i'm a johnny i fan that he'll be able

Ejaaz:
to figure it out and pull it off

Josh:
Yeah. And I think I like to, the next thing I'm looking for with these leaks

Josh:
is confirmation that Johnny's actually going to be designing this phone.

Josh:
It seems like he is. I don't understand why they wouldn't put him and the Love

Josh:
From team, I guess the IO team in charge of designing this, but I want to make

Josh:
sure it's actually him or if this is actually a hedge against his screenless device is not working.

Josh:
So that's going to be an important thing to follow as we get more information.

Josh:
A lot of the next questions that I was asking myself is why are they doing this

Josh:
and why are they doing it so quickly?

Josh:
And I think there's a few reasons for this, right? Because when you think about

Josh:
the amount that they're going to be able to actually build, you said 30 million

Josh:
units is what they're kind of aiming for.

Josh:
30 to 40 billion. So assume these costs, $1,000 a piece, which is kind of like a high end phone price.

Josh:
That's 30 to $40 billion of revenue over two years.

Josh:
Anthropic just made $25 billion of revenue in like the last few months.

Josh:
So I'm not sure how much is going to move the needle. And I have to assume this is probably for.

Josh:
The beginning of that hardware mode, but also the timing is funny because this

Josh:
is rumored to be when they want to IPO.

Josh:
And what better catalyst for getting people excited about your company than

Josh:
to build a new suite of hardware that can compete with Apple?

Josh:
Whether or not it actually does a good job, that is TBD.

Josh:
But I assume this is probably a nice, really big catalyst for them as they go into IPO season as well.

Josh:
And I just can't help but think that that has to play some sort of a role in it.

Josh:
And then there's also the business side where you could bundle subscriptions

Josh:
with it and they get developer ecosystems for the hardware and you get that hardware moat.

Josh:
But man, like Apple's got the hardware moat. And the problem is just a skill

Josh:
issue with software. They just can't build the software.

Josh:
OpenAI is approaching it from the other direction. Can they do it?

Josh:
I don't know. We'll be buying it. We'll certainly be trying to promise you that.

Ejaaz:
If it's around, we'll be buying it. But of course, like I want to take the bull

Ejaaz:
hat off for a second and talk about like some of the challenges here.

Ejaaz:
Like number one, we need to make sure that it actually ships in 2027.

Ejaaz:
Number two, we actually need to figure out whether people actually want this

Ejaaz:
thing. I know I do, but I'm a fan of AI in general.

Ejaaz:
Will the averages, will my mom and sister even be interested in this?

Ejaaz:
I think the allure of ChatGPT is good enough. You mentioned bundle subscriptions earlier.

Ejaaz:
I do think that is a good enough selling point versus like, hey,

Ejaaz:
we're launching a phone and we don't really know what to do with it.

Ejaaz:
And then I'm also thinking about Apple's response specifically,

Ejaaz:
because I know Apple is undergoing a very aggressive transition now to orient

Ejaaz:
themselves around the new AI world.

Ejaaz:
They've launched their new M5 chips, which is probably the best consumer device

Ejaaz:
components that can run AI on device.

Ejaaz:
And they've got a new guy at the helm, John Ternus, which is a hardware expert.

Ejaaz:
He's spent the last 35 years building Apple's hardware.

Ejaaz:
He should be the perfect person to build whatever that new device is.

Ejaaz:
So they're going up, it's David versus Goliath. And I don't know whether David's

Ejaaz:
going to win this particular battle, but it's interesting.

Ejaaz:
I think OpenAI will be able to pull something off. They have,

Ejaaz:
heck, they have enough in financing.

Ejaaz:
I think they're going to be raising how much in the IPO? I think it's like 70

Ejaaz:
to 80 billion, maybe even more at a $1.3 trillion valuation is the last that

Ejaaz:
I've heard on the rumor mill.

Ejaaz:
So if anyone's going to pull it off, it might be done.

Josh:
I hope they do. I think if I'm giving my personal take on this,

Josh:
I'm pretty bearish and pretty pessimistic on the phone.

Josh:
I can't imagine, like the amount of love and addiction that everyone has for

Josh:
their iPhone is so strong.

Josh:
And for open AI to come, especially when I'm flip-flopping, people are flip-flopping between Anthropic.

Josh:
We just filmed an episode on Codex when a month ago, we were saying Codex kind of stinks.

Josh:
The amount that people are flip-flopping between these services,

Josh:
the amount of kind of buy-in that's required to not only commit to open AI,

Josh:
but then transfer your phone that you've had for the last 15 years away from

Josh:
that with all of your iMessages and your social apps, that is going to be incredibly hard to do.

Josh:
And the auxiliary device pathway, the one that Johnny was making,

Josh:
the screenless devices, the accessories to the phone, that made sense.

Josh:
Compete directly with the phone.

Josh:
I feel confident they'll be able to bring it to market.

Josh:
Will people be able to buy it? Will people want it? I don't know.

Josh:
I don't think that's the case, But we'll see.

Josh:
We'll see. And that is one of many things that we are going to be kind of discussing

Josh:
as we uncover this roadmap as detectives.

Josh:
EJS, you's had your magnifying glass out recently, going through the job board

Josh:
listing, seeing what these companies have been up to. What have you found?

Josh:
What is in the roadmap for these companies as we progress, I guess,

Josh:
towards the OpenAI iPhone early next year?

Ejaaz:
Okay. So just to explain my logic, I was curious by, my curiosity was piqued

Ejaaz:
by this new phone, right?

Ejaaz:
And I was like, how can I convince myself that this is actually going to be

Ejaaz:
the thing? So I was like, well, let me look at the job postings.

Ejaaz:
If they're hiring for like, you know, a mobile phone engineer or whatever you

Ejaaz:
want to call it directly, then, you know, it's hint, hint, that's probably what they're working on.

Ejaaz:
But I ended up discovering a whole other goldmine, which is their entire product

Ejaaz:
roadmap, OpenAI specifically.

Ejaaz:
And I did the same with Anthropics over the next 24 months.

Ejaaz:
And what surprised me the most is both of these companies I thought would be

Ejaaz:
very similarly aligned in their strategy.

Ejaaz:
They're not. They're actually doing two very different things.

Ejaaz:
And I want to kind of like tell that story over the next couple of minutes.

Ejaaz:
So I looked at OpenAI and I have it displayed up here. I'm not going to walk

Ejaaz:
through the specifics, but I'll give you the general idea of what I found.

Ejaaz:
So there's around 330 job postings currently live as of today.

Ejaaz:
100 got posted in the last week and a half. So OpenAI is really ramping this up.

Ejaaz:
Now, as you'd probably expect, 25 to 30 percent of these roles are roughly sitting

Ejaaz:
at the point where it's directly for AI-forward engineers.

Ejaaz:
So we're talking about researchers, engineers that can actually build and train

Ejaaz:
the model and make this thing actually useful for them.

Ejaaz:
12 to 15% of the roles are specifically around infrastructure and engineering roles.

Ejaaz:
And this is where you see a subset of hardware-specific engineers that are focused

Ejaaz:
on devices specifically.

Ejaaz:
So one could assume that if OpenAI is building a mobile phone or a suite of

Ejaaz:
different devices, this is where the roles are being hired for.

Ejaaz:
And it takes up a non-trivial percentage of the available roles.

Ejaaz:
Now, when I look at a setback from this, right, this seems, I guess,

Ejaaz:
kind of surprising, but pretty obvious.

Ejaaz:
OpenAI underwent a code red over the last...

Ejaaz:
I was going to say six months, but it's literally only been like three or four

Ejaaz:
months. And it's crazy that they flipped the script with Anthropik so quickly.

Ejaaz:
But they've been able to undergo this process of change where they're hiring

Ejaaz:
for very compute intense research heavy things.

Ejaaz:
They've trimmed a bunch of their other efforts to focus on building the best

Ejaaz:
model, specifically the coding model.

Ejaaz:
And that is represented in what I'm seeing right now.

Ejaaz:
But there's a strategic move that I want to call out here, which is Sam made

Ejaaz:
a very big bet about a year ago, which is to go all in on compute.

Ejaaz:
Stargate specifically.

Ejaaz:
He also made a very big bet three months ago to go all in on coding AI specifically.

Ejaaz:
He's treating this like a warlord empire where

Ejaaz:
his entire like ancestral lineage depends

Ejaaz:
on this so he's not treating this like an enterprise company he's

Ejaaz:
not really treating this like he has an IPO coming up in a

Ejaaz:
few months he's like going all in it kind of reminds me of Larry Page where

Ejaaz:
he was quoted saying we're going to go all in and I'm willing to go bankrupt

Ejaaz:
losing this race but I can't afford to lose the race um Sam is approaching this

Ejaaz:
in a very similar manner um I don't know if you have any thoughts on OpenAI

Ejaaz:
specifically before I move to Anthropik,

Ejaaz:
Josh, but like this was like pretty revealing for me.

Josh:
Yeah, it seems like as they move forward, their focus is on Stargate and building

Josh:
like actual data centers.

Josh:
Their focus is on building more efficient code. And then their focus is on these hardware devices.

Josh:
And I guess these Johnny Ive devices, the IO devices that are shipping in parallel,

Josh:
seems like the timelines are pretty tight.

Josh:
And we might even get these before the end of this year. So I think those are

Josh:
probably the three pillars, right? It's just like the core software,

Josh:
the hardware, and then the infrastructure.

Josh:
And notably, missing from this is roles for alignment and safety,

Josh:
which seem to be in the minority here, if I'm correct.

Josh:
But that's not the case for Anthropic. Is that a correct assessment?

Ejaaz:
That is correct. But before we move on to Anthropic, Josh, there is 12% of job

Ejaaz:
postings are in another sector.

Ejaaz:
Can you guess which sector that is in OpenAI?

Josh:
Huh. Hopefully marketing.

Ejaaz:
They got to work on that. Think about a recent alliance or agreement that they

Ejaaz:
had to sign with a big government entity.

Josh:
Oh, is this government work?

Ejaaz:
Yeah, 12%. Whoa, interesting. Do you want to know where their second largest employee base is?

Josh:
Where? Is this the Pentagon?

Ejaaz:
Washington, D.C., dude. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Josh:
Wait, that's kind of crazy. Interesting.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, they've aggressively hired on the D.C. side, which kind of makes sense

Ejaaz:
because Sam has been a huge fan of kind of trying to lobby government entities

Ejaaz:
or just trying to lobby AI policies in general to become more favorable or AI favorable.

Ejaaz:
So it makes sense that he has the largest presence out there.

Ejaaz:
And Anthropic specifically doesn't. But yeah, we can move into Anthropic now.

Josh:
Okay, yeah, that's interesting. I had no idea. What is Anthropic working on?

Ejaaz:
Okay, so Anthropic has, thankfully, a much more well-laid-out website,

Ejaaz:
which can kind of fall through.

Josh:
And a lot of open roles. Everyone's saying AI is killing jobs,

Josh:
but man, these companies are hiring.

Ejaaz:
Did you hear the news? So some of the folks listening, Joshua and I are based on the East Coast.

Ejaaz:
And in New York specifically, Anthropik is currently about to buy one of the

Ejaaz:
largest office spaces that any tech company has ever bought in the most recent couple of years.

Ejaaz:
They're about to have a huge presence out here, and they're going to be focusing

Ejaaz:
on three specific roles.

Ejaaz:
Number one is go-to-market, obviously sales.

Ejaaz:
Number two, enterprise-specific. And number three, the finance bros.

Ejaaz:
They are going wholeheartedly into the financial services sector,

Ejaaz:
and they want every analyst, MD, and fund manager to be using Claude to direct

Ejaaz:
all their different workflows.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if you saw the news yesterday, Josh, but they just signed a $1.5

Ejaaz:
billion joint venture with Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, and I think it's Hellman

Ejaaz:
and Freed to basically integrate Claude into every single one of their portfolio companies.

Ejaaz:
We're talking about like 250 plus portfolio companies for Blackstone alone.

Ejaaz:
And the idea is Anthropics is going to shove a bunch of Anthropic engineers.

Ejaaz:
These are costly people, the most valuable people into these enterprises to

Ejaaz:
build custom workflows just so that they get hooked on Claude,

Ejaaz:
just so they get addicted on the LLMs.

Ejaaz:
And then the rest kind of like pays for itself, I guess.

Josh:
Okay first where is this building that they're buying i'm so curious i think it's the google.

Ejaaz:
Office in chelsea it's like a massive space

Josh:
Yeah nice and i definitely see i noticed the shift to move to financial services

Josh:
i've seen this a lot with claude recently yes in fact as we were recording this

Josh:
they just released an update to a finance for claude basically where they're

Josh:
releasing a series of different templates that can do a lot of different things

Josh:
as it relates to financial analysis.

Josh:
So it does models, it does spreadsheets, it does financial projections,

Josh:
it does all the things that you would hope a analyst would do.

Josh:
Claude is building these as kind of pre-templatized workflows that are built

Josh:
directly into co-work and Claude code.

Josh:
So if you want to get evaluation, if you want to get trajectories of pipelines

Josh:
or revenues, all that is now done within Claude.

Josh:
And I like the shift that we're kind of seeing into the financial services business.

Josh:
It's mostly been open since now.

Josh:
Perplexity is really the only one that's moved into financial services.

Josh:
They've tried that Bloomberg alternative. It's pretty good. But Claude moving

Josh:
into this. Yeah, here's the post right here of all the things that they're doing.

Josh:
KYC screener, statement and auditor. It's got all the tools, one click plug in,

Josh:
So it makes sense that they move to New York, get a little bit closer to Wall

Josh:
Street, and start moving into financials. This is, I mean, this is exciting.

Josh:
This is really cool, particularly when the market is ripping the way it is.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, it's so interesting that, like, both companies, probably at the same time,

Ejaaz:
have gone into becoming kind of like a sales and BD-driven business.

Ejaaz:
I thought the LLMs would just speak for themselves. But the truth is,

Ejaaz:
the technology and power is here. It's just not well enough dispersed,

Ejaaz:
and it's not going to diffuse until you handhold the people.

Ejaaz:
The blocker right now are humans.

Ejaaz:
The blocker is siloed data sets in all of these top enterprises and companies

Ejaaz:
that don't really know how to integrate the thing with AI.

Ejaaz:
And the AI is not smart enough to know how to integrate itself into it.

Ejaaz:
So it's kind of like a chicken and an egg problem, and Anthropic is taking the first step here.

Ejaaz:
OpenAI as well, they've signed a similar joint venture with similar companies

Ejaaz:
to basically put both of their products at the helm here.

Ejaaz:
If we go back to Anthropik in general, the point I want to make around these

Ejaaz:
roles is, listen, they have around the similar amount of roles that OpenAI is

Ejaaz:
hiring for, but the strategy that they're pursuing here is a bit different.

Ejaaz:
They are treating their company as an enterprise services company.

Ejaaz:
So they famously or infamously have not bought as much compute as OpenAI.

Ejaaz:
As I mentioned, Sam is like the conqueror. He's like, I need all the compute.

Ejaaz:
I'll lever it all up. And if it pays off, it pays off. and it is paying off

Ejaaz:
because now he can serve his Claude Mythos competitor, GBT 5.5,

Ejaaz:
to anyone and everyone. Claude Mythos is still restricted on the Anthropic side.

Ejaaz:
Anthropic is being more strategic. Their bread and butter, the majority of the

Ejaaz:
money that they have made so far and still,

Ejaaz:
I think it's something crazy like 70%, sorry, 60% of their revenue recently

Ejaaz:
comes purely from enterprise and they want to clearly seed that reputation and wrap it up even more.

Ejaaz:
They are focusing primarily on enterprises, which is why we don't see more of a consumer base.

Ejaaz:
You know, We've seen all the crazy social media spread around restrictions on

Ejaaz:
rate limits and stuff like that.

Ejaaz:
I think that's because they're just focusing wholeheartedly on enterprise customers.

Ejaaz:
They don't want to restrict them. I think they have like...

Ejaaz:
As of two weeks ago, they have like 500 to 1,000 clients that pay them well

Ejaaz:
over one to five million dollars per year.

Ejaaz:
If they can ramp that up, that's a lot of ARR, basically.

Ejaaz:
And they recently hit, what is it, 44 billion ARR?

Josh:
Yeah, pretty good business. And you could start to see the clear divide between

Josh:
these two companies as we go through these job boards and the rumor mills where

Josh:
OpenAI, they currently have the best image model. They're working on consumer hardware.

Josh:
They're building a lot for consumer, although they're working on their kind

Josh:
of commercial enterprise segment as well. But Anthropic is all in on enterprise,

Josh:
on financial services, on selling to businesses.

Josh:
And I think that's why we've seen their ARR go completely nuclear,

Josh:
because they're selling much larger ticket items to much more sticky customers

Josh:
that are going to stick around and endure 12, 24-month contracts with these

Josh:
companies. So it's interesting. It's fascinating.

Josh:
The hardware story to me is the most exciting. I cannot wait to get AI-first

Josh:
hardware. I hope it's good.

Josh:
I hope it's good. Like WWDC from Apple is happening next month,

Josh:
where hopefully Siri doesn't suck.

Josh:
The first AI first devices are going to be from OpenAI.

Josh:
And now the timeline might have moved up a little bit sooner.

Josh:
So that news at least is very exciting.

Josh:
This has been an investigative review of what is in store.

Josh:
I think the prompt for you guys is one, will you use an OpenAI phone?

Josh:
Like, will you swap your iPhone for this phone?

Josh:
And I know it's tough to tell without actually having it in your hands to see.

Josh:
But it seems like such a stretch.

Josh:
You just, what about you? Any final parting thoughts before we head out for the day?

Ejaaz:
I want to see the device. I want to see some visuals. You know why I feel this way?

Ejaaz:
Like, don't even give me the device. It's that dime advert with Alexander Skarsgård

Ejaaz:
or whatever, which, I don't know, turned out to be a fake or a dud or a Chinese pair of earbuds.

Ejaaz:
I need something from OpenAI. And they're the only ones that are leading it.

Josh:
So bad. Well, hopefully we get that before we get... Will we get a better Siri

Josh:
before we get an OpenAI hardware device? That's the question.

Ejaaz:
Who knows? Probably not.

Josh:
Probably not. But that is the episode for today. Ejos, thank you for all this

Josh:
investigative journalism and to the job boards here for giving us some guidance

Josh:
on all things OpenAI, all things Anthropic.

Josh:
If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to share it with a friend who might

Josh:
also enjoy this, who might also be interested in the crazy cool new hardware

Josh:
leaks that are coming. If you enjoyed, leave a comment down below.

Josh:
Subscribe on YouTube. Leave us a five-star review on wherever you listen to

Josh:
your podcast. And as always, thank you so much for watching.

Josh:
And we'll see you guys in the next episode.