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  1. TBPN
  2. Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky
Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN · Feb 5, 2026

OpenAI launches Codex 5.3 & Frontier as Anthropic's ads attack. Sam Altman & Sholto Douglas discuss the AI arms race & Alphabet doubles CapEx.

Anthropic Uses a 'Mario Kart Blue Shell' Strategy to Attack OpenAI

A smaller competitor can attack the market leader without naming them. Everyone assumes the criticism targets the dominant player, allowing the challenger to land hits on the category as a whole, which disproportionately harms the leader. This is a powerful metaphor for challenger marketing.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Anthropic's Ads Are a Multi-Pronged Strategy Timed for a Potential IPO

The Super Bowl campaign is not just about user acquisition. It's a strategic move to build brand awareness with investors, boost morale to retain elite researchers, increase public scrutiny on OpenAI's ad rollout, and put themselves on the map ahead of a potential IPO.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

AI Progress Will Soon Be Measured by GDP Impact, Not Technical Benchmarks

Sam Altman suggests that as AI models create enormous economic value, proxy metrics like task completion benchmarks will become obsolete. The most meaningful chart will be the model's direct impact on GDP. This signals a fundamental shift from the research phase of AI to an era of broad economic transformation.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

OpenAI's Frontier Signals a Shift From Single Agents to Enterprise Orchestration

OpenAI's new platform, Frontier, is designed for building 'AI co-workers' that can access a company's various data sources and systems. This represents a strategic move beyond single-user chatbots toward an enterprise-grade orchestration layer for managing teams of interconnected AI agents.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

OpenAI Is Hiring Hundreds of Consultants to Bridge AI's 'Capability Overhang'

Despite powerful new models, enterprises struggle to integrate them. OpenAI is hiring hundreds of 'forward-deployed engineers' to help corporations customize models and automate tasks. This highlights that human expertise is still critical for unlocking the business value of advanced AI, creating a new wave of high-skill jobs.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

OpenAI Views Ad Integration Directly Into LLM Responses as a 'Dystopic' Red Line

Sam Altman states that OpenAI's first principle for advertising is to avoid putting ads directly into the LLM's conversational stream. He calls the scenario depicted in Anthropic's ads a 'crazy dystopic, bad sci-fi movie,' suggesting ads will be adjacent to the user experience, not manipulative content within it.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Anthropic's 'Suicide Bombing' Ad Strategy Risks Damaging the Entire AI Category

By attacking the concept of ads in LLMs, Anthropic may not just hurt OpenAI but also erode general consumer trust in all AI chatbots. This high-risk strategy could backfire if the public becomes skeptical of the entire category, including Anthropic's own products, especially if they ever decide to introduce advertising.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Truthfulness Separates Aggressive Advertising from 'Dirty' Political-Style Attacks

Effective aggressive ads, like Apple's 'Get a Mac' campaign, are rooted in verifiable truths about competitors. In contrast, 'dirty' ads, like political attacks, rely on creating deceptive impressions. Anthropic's ads are argued to be closer to the latter, as they portray a future for AI ads that isn't based on factual product plans.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Google's Massive CapEx Increase Is a 'Capital as a Moat' Play to Deter AI Rivals

Google plans to spend up to $185 billion on CapEx in 2026, more than its lifetime spend up to 2021. This isn't just about building infrastructure; it's a strategic message to the market and potential IPO candidates like OpenAI and Anthropic about the immense, and growing, cost to compete at the frontier of AI.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Interacting with AI Models 'Mid-Turn' Is a Major UX Leap for Complex Tasks

Sam Altman highlights a key feature in new coding models: the ability for a user to interrupt and steer the AI while it's in the middle of a multi-hour task. This shifts the workflow from one-shot prompting to dynamic management, making the AI feel more like a true coworker you can course-correct in real time.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Daytona CEO Argues AI Agents Need Full 'Computers,' Not Just API Access

As AI agents evolve from information retrieval to active work (coding, QA testing, running simulations), they require dedicated, sandboxed computational environments. This creates a new infrastructure layer where every agent is provisioned its own 'computer,' moving far beyond simple API calls and creating a massive market opportunity.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

AI Hardware Demand Is Now So High It's Disrupting Consumer Tech Supply Chains

The intense demand for memory chips for AI is causing a shortage so severe that NVIDIA is delaying a new gaming GPU for the first time in 30 years. This demonstrates a major inflection point where the AI industry's hardware needs are creating significant, tangible ripple effects on adjacent, multi-billion dollar consumer markets.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

Anthropic's Sholto Douglas Says Observing Human Work Is Better Training Data Than Documents

The most valuable data for training enterprise AI is not a company's internal documents, but a recording of the actual work processes people use to create them. The ideal training scenario is for an AI to act like an intern, learning directly from human colleagues, which is far more informative than static knowledge bases.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago

HQ Trivia's Viral Success Masked a Core Product Flaw: It Made Smart People Feel Stupid

HQ Trivia host Scott Rogowsky reveals a key insight: the game was too difficult to win consistently. This frustrated even highly intelligent players, leading to churn. A core principle for engaging consumer products, especially games, is to allow users to feel competent and successful, a lesson he's applying to his new venture, Savvy.

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky thumbnail

Sam Altman on Codex 5.3 Launch, Anthropic's Sholto Douglas, Alphabet Beats Q4 Estimates | Sam Altman, Sholto Douglas, Daniel Barcelo, Mandy Fields, Ivan Burazin, Scott Rogowsky

TBPN·14 days ago