Operai has just spent $ 6.4 billion acquiring IO, the nascent hardware company of Jony Ive. As someone who grew up idolizing the job association (subscription of MAC addicts, Marathon on Shareware, one of everything they ever did, I understand the charm. But this movement reveals the existential crisis of OpenAi: they are playing a game they have already lost.
The distribution kings have already won
Let’s be clear about the end of the consumer’s game: Google and Apple will dominate, with Microsoft behind the desk and perhaps, eventually, the phones. They have what OpenAI lacks desperately: hardware experience, distribution channels and capital scale that eclipses even the striking financing rounds of OpenAi.
Hardware is not just another pit: it is a pit where its competitors have decades of experience and is learning to swim. Bowing to your weakness is how you cut your head by the companies that do this while sleeping. Apple sends hundreds of millions of devices annually. Android of Google is executed in billions. Operai is acquiring a company that has never sent anything.
The roads not taken
There are roads that Operai could follow but it won’t. NSFW applications. Deep company that pushes beyond its disinfected chatgpt. The autonomous agents living in discord servers, slide in Issssage, become real digital beings that inhabit the Internet. But they will not touch these opportunities, too difficult to monetize, they also depend on competition platforms, too scary to contemplate the distribution possibilities.
These niches are mature for higher risk players, especially in open source. While Operai pursues Apple’s shadow, Scrapy teams are building the experiences of AI that people really want but cannot get from buttoned corporate platforms.
The burning platform
Instead, Openai is stuck in a brutal position. They are desperately promoting traffic to their website. Build an application that needs Siri’s permit. Pour money into the fire only to maintain the pace of competitors who can afford to be effective indefinitely. Google and Anthrope coincide with their abilities, while Microsoft, their alleged partner, reduced each bet.
The $ 6.4 billion for IO is not strategy; It is despair. While much good may arise, the moment was felt as a bought attention, under a company that built the fastest growing product of all times in a very discreet way. When their competitive advantage Evapora and its partners begin to look in another place, it includes anything that can create a pit. Even if that pit is in territory, where you are hopeless.
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The open alternative that will not take
This is what Openai would defend me: make hardware and models really open. Let me customize it, customize it, develop it, do it genuinely mine. I want to trust this device with which I have such an intimate relationship. Allow them to create a platform where thousands of developers can build the experiences of the OpenAi is too much to the risk of trying.
I have no confidence in his corporate courage, even with Sam the helm. They are chasing the same plays book of the closed ecosystem that Apple perfected decades ago, except without Apple’s advantages.
If I wanted a beautiful closed box with an AI inside, I will wait for the Apple version. At least it will work with my other devices.
The imperative of the infrastructure
AI is not another consumer product. For many, he is a life coach, a source of truth, a friend. This intimate relationship requires transparency, property and control that closed systems cannot provide.
Open source AI projects already coincide or exceed OpenAi’s performance while running in local hardware. Elizaos, Mistral and others show that community development exceeds corporate R&D. While Operai burns billions in beautiful hardware, open communities are solving real problems today.
The security argument for closed systems has collapsed. When AI becomes as critical as electricity or water, patented control becomes actively dangerous. Switzerland demands the open source for government systems because transparency allows security. Each violation of the equifax scale reinforces this truth.
The beautiful box we could have
Here is the opportunity looking at Openai in the face: be the anti-uppop. While Google and Apple block users in their ecosystems, Openai could build something revolutionary: really open hardware that runs truly open models. Imagine the IVE design genius creating devices that we can really modify, customize and do ours.
This is not just idealism; It is the strategy. Openai cannot overcome Apple or Google Google. But they could be pioneers in something that none of the holders would dare to try: Premium hardware that respects user’s sovereignty. Beautiful devices that developers can extend. Ai colleagues that users really possess.
The acquisition of IO of $ 6.4 billion does not have to be a defensive play. It could be the beginning of a new paradigm, one in which Operai drives opening instead of blocking. They have the excellence of IVE design, Altman’s vision and a moment in history where people are hungry for alternatives to Big Tech surveillance capitalism.
I want Operai to succeed. Not as another walled garden, but as proof that open systems can be as elegant as closed. That user empowerment and a beautiful design are not mutually exclusive. That the future of AI can live in a box that we really possess, modify and understand.
The choice is yours: become another also in the career of the closed ecosystem, or it is a pioneer in the open future that we desperately need.
