# Is OpenAI in Trouble? Lawsuits, Leadership & the AI Arms Race

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 23 Jan 2026, 8:42.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/76213dda-7350-4f8f-8da9-b3db0110f414/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

In this clip from Market Mondays, Rashad Bilal and Ian Dunlap dive deep into the dramatic developments surrounding OpenAI. They tackle the recent lawsuit against the company, growing questions about leadership, and the fierce competition from major players like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic, and Meta. Rashad Bilal highlights the risks developers face with proprietary information uploaded to OpenAI, pointing out unsettling claims that some product outputs mirror confidential data. He discusses how Elon Musk's ongoing legal battle with OpenAI underscores wider issues, including shifting sentiment towards CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft’s strategic maneuvers—like moving Azure clients to other large language models. Ian Dunlap digs into OpenAI’s financial challenges. Even with an impressive $20 billion in revenue, their high spending has kept them unprofitable, prompting the unexpected introduction of ads on ChatGPT. Ian explains how competitors, like Google’s Gemini, are leveraging OpenAI’s struggles to strengthen their own platforms by pledging never to run ads. The conversation uncovers how OpenAI’s support network—from Microsoft, Oracle, and Nvidia to SoftBank and Broadcom—remains strong, but not unshakeable. Both Rashad and Ian emphasize that erratic leadership and mounting negative press could erode investor confidence and accelerate an exodus to rival platforms, especially as Anthropic nears a public offering and gains customers like Microsoft. The hosts also touch on concerning rumors emanating from San Francisco about the origins of OpenAI and the transition from nonprofit to for-profit status. They suggest leaders need composure and credibility to succeed at the helm of a company driving the future of artificial intelligence. Join Market Mondays as Rashad Bilal and Ian Dunlap break down the high-stakes battle for AI supremacy, exploring OpenAI’s opportunities and challenges—and what this means for the future of tech. *Don’t forget to like & subscribe for more insights on business, investing, and tech!* #OpenAI #MarketMondays #ArtificialIntelligence #TechNews #SamAltman #Microsoft #Anthropic #Gemini #ElonMusk #Nvidia #IanDunlap #RashadBilal #AIWars #BusinessInsights See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
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[0:39] Speaker 1: National Association Member FDIC.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Is open AI in trouble.
[0:47] Speaker 3: I was one of the first ones screaming this, but
[0:51] Speaker 3: with this lawsuit and the paper trail that has been
[0:55] Speaker 3: left there, it doesn't mean that the company is dead.
[0:58] Speaker 3: I'm not saying that because I've been a big fan
[1:00] Speaker 3: of open Ai, but even shots to Calcanus, Jason also
[1:04] Speaker 3: has championed my statement that I made last year on
[1:07] Speaker 3: the show is that if you're a developer, be careful
[1:10] Speaker 3: of the ip that you've put on chat GPT because
[1:14] Speaker 3: now in Silicon Valley there are some companies who are
[1:16] Speaker 3: saying that they've uploaded some proprietary information and now that
[1:19] Speaker 3: information that's coming out in product form inside of open Ai.
[1:23] Speaker 3: So Elon may not win every battle per se, but
[1:29] Speaker 3: in terms of war, he's pretty good. And the sentiment
[1:32] Speaker 3: on SAM is changing rapidly, so much so that Microsoft
[1:38] Speaker 3: is moving the Azure customers to another large language model provider.
[1:43] Speaker 4: So I think.
[1:45] Speaker 3: When Brad Gersner woke up that story and had the
[1:48] Speaker 3: interview with him and he was flippant in the answer
[1:51] Speaker 3: about the revenue, that was that caused a lot of
[1:56] Speaker 3: damage in the market.
[1:57] Speaker 4: And for that company, they have to and get this done.
[2:01] Speaker 3: And he needs management, crisis management like no other right
[2:04] Speaker 3: now because this can destroy some of the valuation of
[2:07] Speaker 3: the company. But Microsoft, from what I'm told inside the headquarters,
[2:11] Speaker 3: that's not very happy with the investment over him right now.
[2:16] Speaker 1: There are reasons for the concern. I think obviously, you know,
[2:21] Speaker 1: they had a pretty good year. They brought in twenty billion,
[2:24] Speaker 1: but they've spent so much more. I think people need
[2:27] Speaker 1: to understand that open Ai is not a profitable company
[2:32] Speaker 1: present day right not profitable. I think what caused a
[2:36] Speaker 1: stir this or last week was the idea of them
[2:39] Speaker 1: now adding ads to the platform.
[2:41] Speaker 2: But why would you add?
[2:43] Speaker 1: Right, they were adamant about like that was not something
[2:46] Speaker 1: that they wanted to do, and now they've had to
[2:47] Speaker 1: reverse course.
[2:48] Speaker 2: Well why do you take on ads?
[2:50] Speaker 1: Well, you need revenue, You need the money, like we
[2:52] Speaker 1: need money, and you have millions, like eight hundred people,
[2:56] Speaker 1: eight hundred million people using it or nine hundred million
[2:58] Speaker 1: people using it low tiers high. You need to bring
[3:01] Speaker 1: in some capital because the overspending. Right, at some point
[3:06] Speaker 1: that check has to be cash, right, like the The
[3:10] Speaker 1: problem with that is that the competition has a TV.
[3:15] Speaker 2: It's here.
[3:16] Speaker 1: So the second that they say that they're going to
[3:19] Speaker 1: now add adds to the platform, what did Google do
[3:22] Speaker 1: with Gemini? They said, look, nah, man, we're never going
[3:24] Speaker 1: to do that because that's not the only thing that
[3:27] Speaker 1: they rely on.
[3:27] Speaker 2: And so the competition is here.
[3:29] Speaker 1: So when you look at that, the competition anthropic is
[3:32] Speaker 1: about to go public.
[3:33] Speaker 2: I know, they just try to raise the evaluation for
[3:34] Speaker 2: that as well.
[3:35] Speaker 1: You got to look for who's your support and so
[3:38] Speaker 1: the comp for them is Google for sure, meta anthropic, right,
[3:42] Speaker 1: but they support even though you just talked about Microsoft
[3:46] Speaker 1: is still a supporter. It's it's more advantageous for them to.
[3:50] Speaker 2: Want open Ai to do well.
[3:52] Speaker 1: At the deal structure, they still have Oracle, right, they
[3:56] Speaker 1: and they're kind of like in this thing together. But
[3:58] Speaker 1: we know that Larry Ellison is willing to do things
[4:01] Speaker 1: and we saw that recently with the Netflix Warner Brothers
[4:04] Speaker 1: deal and go above and beyond to make sure that
[4:06] Speaker 1: his investment works. Soft Bank is still a supporter, and
[4:10] Speaker 1: Video is a supporter. AMD is a supporter, ye Broadcom
[4:14] Speaker 1: as a partner, so they have a strong base of
[4:17] Speaker 1: partnerships and support that won't, in my opinion, won't allow
[4:22] Speaker 1: it to fail. But they got to start making some
[4:25] Speaker 1: money and so the add thing and doing it quickly.
[4:29] Speaker 1: In fact, they're saying that based on the bottom line now,
[4:34] Speaker 1: profitability doesn't look likely till twenty twenty nine minimum.
[4:40] Speaker 2: Right, that's three more years.
[4:41] Speaker 1: So now, how do you get this expenditure of when
[4:45] Speaker 1: we talked about the five hundred billion dollar investment and stargate, right,
[4:50] Speaker 1: how do we get this investment inside of AMD can
[4:53] Speaker 1: be profitable? How does the Broadcom thing make sense? They
[4:56] Speaker 1: got to figure this out and figure it out quickly
[4:59] Speaker 1: because it's not slowing down, and that Anthropic is not
[5:02] Speaker 1: slowing down, and I was even dropped xai is not slowing.
[5:05] Speaker 4: Down, that's slowing down at all.
[5:07] Speaker 3: Nope, Gemini added eight million users in the last year
[5:15] Speaker 3: when they were behind initially, and like I said, Microsoft
[5:19] Speaker 3: became one of Anthropics' top customers on pace to spend
[5:22] Speaker 3: nearly five hundred million dollars a year for Anthropic AI
[5:26] Speaker 3: to power Microsoft products. They can still invest and own
[5:29] Speaker 3: forty nine percent of a company, but if you have
[5:31] Speaker 3: an erratic leader, you're going to say, let me hedge
[5:34] Speaker 3: my bet and invest somewhere else so that the deliverability
[5:38] Speaker 3: and the quality of the AI is hired for the customers.
[5:40] Speaker 3: And as soon as they go public, we'll take our
[5:42] Speaker 3: cash coffers, and then we'll go invest in another company
[5:45] Speaker 3: again and leave you out to be on your own.
[5:48] Speaker 4: You can't have an a radic leader. That's a theft.
[5:51] Speaker 3: And also on top of that, that report of that
[5:53] Speaker 3: suicide and that and that engineer being killed.
[5:56] Speaker 4: Some of this shit is coming back on you. It's
[6:00] Speaker 4: too many. It's too many.
[6:01] Speaker 3: Rumblings in San fran about this was clearly stolen from
[6:06] Speaker 3: Elon just the it was nonprofit and you converted a
[6:09] Speaker 3: for profit and then moved him out. He stopped the
[6:13] Speaker 3: Kademene used, he's awake. Now you gotta you have a
[6:16] Speaker 3: real lawsuit to fight. Everyone wants to walk away, and
[6:20] Speaker 3: Google and anthrotopic are going to be some of the
[6:22] Speaker 3: biggest beneficiaries of So it goes back to you can't
[6:26] Speaker 3: have an emotional, erratic man leading a company of that magnitude.
[6:30] Speaker 4: You can't trust him.
[6:32] Speaker 1: And it's the idea of it being in debt is not.
[6:35] Speaker 1: I mean you feel like you hear that investment world
[6:38] Speaker 1: all the time, especially with startups. The issue is the
[6:41] Speaker 1: scale of the debt. It usually is not in the
[6:45] Speaker 1: hundreds of billions, and that they were.
[6:48] Speaker 4: Action for bail that's for a bailout before they went public.
[6:54] Speaker 2: What's another round?
[6:56] Speaker 1: The probably now when you raise another round, when people
[6:58] Speaker 1: see that the competitors have caught.
[6:59] Speaker 2: Up to you, what's yeah, they got to figure something out, earners,
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