Intel was the leader with computer chips but lost the elad by failing to move from 10nm to nm. The Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel in 2021, he outlined an ambitious plan to restore Intel’s manufacturing leadership with a goal to achieve five nodes in four years, aiming to catch up with TSMC and Samsung. However, this plan encountered significant execution issues. Intel’s 10nm process was already behind schedule when he took over, and subsequent promises about new process nodes like Intel 7 and Intel 4 faced delays, undermining investor and customer confidence.
Intel experienced huge delays in transitioning to smaller process nodes, like the 10nm and 7nm technologies. This lag allowed competitors like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to overtake Intel in process technology, which is critical for efficiency and performance in chip manufacturing.
Kai-fu Lee says OpenaI will not release GPT 5 to May 2025 or later, OpenAI had problems going to the next step.
xAI, Anthropic, Meta or Google have now caught up to GPT 4, GPT 4o and o1.
If xAI or others can cycle quickly to new LLM models with more data and compute. They can go next level and OpenAI is only playing around with repeating queries (aka taking more time to make answers). The solutions are very weak ad are not a substitute to make real fundamental progress. Intel tried to make chips that had some more performance despite not moving from 10 nm to 5 nm, 3 nm or 2 nm.
In 5-8 months the xAI Grok could be vastly better than the others. Grok 3 in 2 months, Grok 4 in 5 months, Grok 5 in 8months. OpenAI GPT 5 will be going against Grok4 and then a couple of months later against Grok 5. By the end of the year Grok 6. Grok 6 could have 40X the training compute.
OpenAI is struggling with GPT5 then it is like Intel. They were in the lead and then they were able to deliver the next improvements and fell badly behind.
All the good talent leaves as they have already started and they are dead men walking by the end of Q1 2025.
Key Research Leaders Who Left OpenAI
Mira Murati – Chief Technology Officer
Murati announced her departure in September 2024 after six and a half years with OpenAI. As CTO, she played a crucial role in the company’s technological advancements and briefly served as interim CEO during Sam Altman’s temporary removal in November 2023.
Bob McGrew – Chief Research Officer
McGrew left OpenAI in September 2024 after eight years with the company. He had been serving as the chief research officer since August and was instrumental in OpenAI’s research efforts, from early successes in reinforcement learning to the development of large language models
Barret Zoph – Vice President of Research
Zoph also announced his resignation in September 2024. He joined OpenAI just before the launch of ChatGPT and helped build the post-training team from scratch
Ilya Sutskever – Co-founder and Chief Scientist
Sutskever, one of OpenAI’s co-founders, left the company in May 2024. He was a key figure in the company’s research efforts and co-led the ‘superalignment’ team focused on AI safety. After leaving OpenAI, Sutskever co-founded a new AI startup called Safe Superintelligence (SSI)
Jan Leike – Head of Alignment
Leike, who co-led the ‘superalignment’ team with Sutskever, also left OpenAI in May 2024. He has since joined Anthropic, an AI competitor, as a machine learning researcher
John Schulman – Co-founder
Schulman, another OpenAI co-founder, left the company in August 2024 to join Anthropic. He cited a desire to focus more deeply on AI alignment and return to hands-on technical work as reasons for his departure
Andrej Karpathy – Research Scientist
Karpathy, a prominent research scientist at OpenAI, left the company in February 2024.
These departures represent a significant loss of expertise and leadership for OpenAI, particularly in its research division. The exodus has raised questions about the company’s internal dynamics and future direction in the competitive field of artificial intelligence research and development.
OpenAI Financial Losses
OpenAI needs to justify growing AI data center investments. Microsoft can always choose to collapse OpenAI and take what has value into Microsoft. OpenAI has to justify its existence with superior recruitment and leading capabilities. If the superior recruitment and there is no leading capabilities then Microsoft can choose to not have the OpenAI overhead.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I’ve been considering investing in Intel on the “buy low sell high” strategy. They are trading at lows, in fact their stock is valued at the price of their physical assets, their transition to 18 angstroms seems on progress, the 6890P CPUs are competetive and lets be honest Intel has a mountain of IP patents.
The sudden departure of their technically oriented CEO to be replaced by two interm CEOs both of whom have a background in finance coupled with Intel’s love of non-meritorious promotion was all it took for me to look elsewhere. I don’t think that Intel has much of a future past being sold for parts. It is worrying that the interm CEOs haven’t come out and discussed their vision for Intel.
If you want the “dead chip walking” view read the latest Oxide Computer blog
on their interactions with Intel.
Wonder what Altman is doing by bankrolling OKLO. Makes no sense to me. He does know they won’t build anything, right? right? (insert star wars episode 2 meme here)