Openai

Over the last year the workflows vs. agents debate has turned from a niche engineering question into something every product team seems to argue about. New tooling lowers the barrier to spin up an AI agent that can call tools in a loop, so leaders start asking whether they should rebuild processes around these agents, or stick with the safer structure of step-by-step workflows. The conversation heats up because both sides have real wins and real failure modes: agents feel magical when they solve fuzzy, open-ended tasks, but they can be slow, costly, and unpredictable at scale; workflows are efficient and auditable, but can feel rigid when the job needs exploration. That tension between flexibility and control is why this topic is hot and why teams keep getting stuck. ...

Bloomberg just published this fascinating map of the AI power network, showing how companies like NVIDIA, OpenAI, Microsoft, AMD, Oracle, and Intel are now intertwined through billions in deals, compute, and equity. It’s not just a supply chain anymore. It’s a feedback loop — where hardware, software, and capital keep feeding each other. NVIDIA sits at the center with a $4.5 trillion market cap, investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI, while selling GPUs to Oracle, AMD, xAI, and everyone else. OpenAI, in turn, signs a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle, deploys 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs, and gives AMD an option to buy 160 million OpenAI shares. Microsoft is still the connective tissue, part investor, part service provider, part enabler.

Despite a $40 billion funding round, only $10 billion is secured, with the rest contingent on converting to a for-profit model. OpenAI is burning billions, potentially $14 billion in 2025 alone, due to high compute costs and infrastructure investments like the Stargate data center. SoftBank’s financial health is also at risk due to its significant investments in OpenAI, leading to potential asset sales. OpenAI’s high spending and increasing costs raise concerns about its long-term sustainability. ...