The Start of OpenAI's Trial Against Elon Musk Wasn't the Worst Thing That Happened to Sam Altman Today

Elon Musk took the stand in a California courtroom today to ask for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ousting. Still, it wasn’t the worst thing that happened to the executive on Tuesday. That’s because on Monday night, the Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that ChatGPT’s growth had slowed toward the end of last year, and as a result, OpenAI had missed its internal goal of one billion weekly active users and its own target revenue for the year. Citing people familiar with the matter, the WSJ reported that CFO Sarah Friar was worried about revenue growth and unsure if OpenAI could pay for its many computing contracts. These concerns have put Friar and a bunch of other executives at odds with Altman, the report claims, as they have sought to rein in costs. Meanwhile, the OpenAI board has questioned Altman on his “efforts to secure even more computing power despite the business slowdown,” the WSJ wrote. If the report is true, it clashes with the picture that OpenAI has been trying to portray. OpenAI and many of its peers in the AI industry have long claimed that AI demand would arrive, and to accommodate it, the industry has to rapidly shore up as much computing capacity as possibl