Apple’s next iPhone unveiling is a month away, but OpenAI may have just sucked all the new tech product excitement out of the room with today’s GPT-5 unveiling. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Aug 7, 2025
The Briefing
By Martin Peers
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Greetings!
Apple’s next iPhone unveiling is a month away, but OpenAI may have just sucked all the new tech product excitement out of the room with today’s GPT-5 unveiling. The livestream, featuring a parade of staffers highlighting the new flagship AI model’s range of impressive capabilities, was eerily reminiscent of an Apple iPhone event—slickly produced and tightly scripted. OpenAI’s speakers even used classic Apple phrases such as “We can’t wait for you to experience it.” Only Tim Cook and Craig Federighi were missing!
The similarity between the events shouldn’t be surprising, given how freely OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has expressed his admiration for Apple (he even signed up Apple’s iconic design chief, Jony Ive, to work on devices at OpenAI). The more important point, though, is that AI models have overtaken smartphones as the revolutionary technology of the moment—both for good and bad—and OpenAI is the industry leader. As Altman noted today, 700 million people are using ChatGPT every week. And as we reported last week, OpenAI roughly doubled its revenue in the first seven months of the year and appears to be generating $1 billion a month. Can anyone be surprised it’s likely to be valued at $500 billion in an employee stock sale, as we and other outlets have reported in recent days? For more on GPT-5, see our coverage here, here and here.
OpenAI seems likely to continue dominating the AI chatbot market, at least for consumers. (On TITV today, venture capitalist Keith Rabois argued OpenAI is a “monopoly business.”) What does its dominance mean for the other competitors, including Google’s Gemini, xAI’s Grok and Meta Platforms’ Llama? Given the enormous cost of development, you could imagine a scenario where the consumer AI market, at least, develops into a smartphone-style duopoly. In that scenario, ChatGPT seems likely to take the position played by the iPhone in the smartphone market. Google’s highly regarded Gemini might then play the same No. 2 role as the company’s Android smartphones. (Google’s advantages include a highly regarded AI research team and extensive distribution with Google search and Gmail.)
That scenario assumes the other players—xAI’s Grok, Meta’s Llama and startups such as Anthropic—will gradually fade away, just as smartphone makers like HTC and LG did. Still, it’s way too early to be sure of how this will evolve. Mark Zuckerberg’s enormous investment shows he is determined to not be left behind.
The real question now is when OpenAI will go public and give everyone a chance to participate in what’s likely to be the most valuable new tech company created in 20 years. If you thought the excitement about Figma was intense, just imagine the opening-day pop for OpenAI!
Streaming’s New Lineup
David Ellison’s Skydance completed its takeover of Paramount Global on Thursday, finally ending the Redstone family’s reign, which stretches back to 1987. Shari Redstone is surely glad to be free: Ellison now has the challenging task of making Paramount a player again.
Particularly in streaming, Paramount is a laggard. With all major firms reporting second-quarter earnings in recent days (including Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday), here’s how they lined up on global subscribers at the end of June. (Netflix’s numbers are from Dec. 31, after which time it stopped reporting the metric.)
Netflix—301 million
Walt Disney Co.—156.2 million
Warner Bros. Discovery—125.7 million
Paramount—77.7 million
NBCUniversal’s Peacock—41 million
The companies’ financial performances mirror the gap in the number of subscribers. Netflix, for instance, generated $11 billion in revenue in the second quarter, compared with Disney’s $6.2 billion and Warner’s $2.8 billion. Paramount brought in just $2.2 billion, while Peacock did $1.2 billion. Quarterly operating profits vary from Netflix’s $3.8 billion to Paramount’s $157 million. (Peacock is still losing money.)
There have been reports that Ellison is interested in going after Warner next. That would produce a better film studio, and presumably a stronger streaming service, although there’s likely some overlap in subscribers. Another possibility is for Paramount and NBCUniversal to combine, bringing together Peacock’s and Paramount’s streaming services. Whatever happens, the current state of play doesn’t seem ideal for anyone but Netflix.
In Other News
• President Donald Trump has called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign from his position, claiming he has conflicts of interest and “there is no other solution to this problem.” Trump did not provide any evidence to support his claim. Tan was appointed CEO of Intel in March.
• Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed higher on Thursday, as all the companies appear to emerge unscathed after details emerged regarding President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs on all imported semiconductors (more on that).
• Warner Bros. Discovery’s second-quarter earnings, released on Thursday, demonstrated why the film and TV company is breaking in two. Its streaming and studios division reported 13% higher revenues of $5.2 billion, while its global linear networks segment—cable channels—reported a 9% drop in revenue.
• Guggenheim Securities is hiring longtime equity research analyst Joel Fishbein as an investment banker focused on advising companies in the software sector, according to a person familiar with the matter.
• Pinterest reported 17% higher revenue of $998 million in the second quarter, while its free cash flow nearly doubled to $196.6 million.
• Tesla is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team as its leader leaves the company, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The team had been building supercomputers powered by in-house chips that would help train vehicles’ self-driving software.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today’s episode of TITV in which we interview Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures about how AI is changing the culture of startups.
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