Would an OpenAI Collapse Pop the Economy?

Azeem Azhar says Paul Kedrosky talked about frontier models and tokens, while he talked about capital spending and the GPUs, and that the two deserve separate discussions. OpenAI and Anthropic depend on ever more powerful systems with a smaller and smaller set of users. The other question is the trillion plus dollars of capital that will go into data centers, where American and global businesses will run increasing amounts of AI.

Ezra Klein says he is confused by the split, because people can mean different things by a bubble popping or deflating. Ezra Klein says a failed business model at OpenAI or Anthropic would pop the economy. If people are happy to use DeepSeek from China for a lot less money and Anthropic collapses, Ezra Klein says the result becomes contagion in the stock market. Alphabet sits in the same worry. Ezra Klein does not think the shock would throw the country into a depression, but says it would have a very big effect on valuations and on what people are willing to lend.

Azeem Azhar answers that the fundamental risk of an infrastructure build-out is not enough customers demanding a product and paying enough for the underlying asset. If enterprises move to open weight models run directly by a hyperscaler, Azeem Azhar says the demand is moving.