Sam Altman's $1 Trillion "Trust Me Bro" Economy

Good morning,

First of all - happy holidays !

You’ll notice that this is a shortened version of the newsletter because even we deserve a little holiday rest. Normal programming should resume next week - but we might take the next week off too.

We’ll see !

Anyway, on to the opinion piece of this week:

I have stopped using ChatGPT altogether. It’s inferior to Gemini and Claude. People have started using the name ‘ChatGPT’ to refer to any LLM they are using and it’s starting to annoy me. Sam Altman , the CEO of OpenAI is in my opinion a highly suspect individual. With his words he’s promising the end of disease, world peace and prosperity for all. His actions , however, show his real intent.

Money.

That’s all he’s after.

Some experts are starting to believe OpenAI is an elaborate ponzi scheme. It certainly looks like one if you look at it more closely.

And it won’t amount to anything but I’m done scooping over cash to perhaps one of the most unethical and irresponsible people on this planet.

So ..

A few weeks ago this interviewer asks Altman a simple question, pointing out a discrepancy in OpenAI’s accounting.

OpenAI has committed to spending $1 trillion on AI infrastructure over the next eight years. Their current revenue is around $13 billion. In the world of reality, that’s a 1% coverage rate. In Silicon Valley, that is considered normal apparently.

His reaction : immediately annoyed. “I’m happy to take over your shares”, Altman snaps back at the interviewer. “Enough with this”.

Criticism is apparently not allowed. If i were a shareholder in OpenAI I would be a bit worried about this little interaction.

Altman isn't a scientist. He isn’t a technologist. He is a dealmaker—perhaps the greatest of our generation—and he is asking humanity to put all our eggs in the OpenAI basket. He wants your data, your electricity, your water, your art, and your economy.

He not only wants the eggs, he wants the basket. He is the basket. And his track record suggests the bottom is made of tissue paper.

The "Loopt" Hole: A History of Ghost Users

To understand the trillion-dollar gamble, you have to look at the 500-user hustle that he spectacularly failed on. Altman’s first company, Loopt, was a social mapping app that required ubiquity to function. Throughout its life, Altman insisted it was winning. When reports surfaced that it had a measly 500 users near the end, Altman claimed it was "100 times" that. The evidence never materialized.

The company was eventually sold to Green Dot—a deal investors alleged was a "dirty" favor for VCs—and the tech was promptly trashed. Altman walked away with millions. It was the birth of his "Just Trust Me, Bro" business model:

1. Promise a world-changing utility.

2. Obfuscate the actual metrics.

3. Exit with a golden parachute before the lights go out.

There are certainly some parallels with Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes there.

Combine the kind of personality that is able to pull that off and put them in the field of Artificial Intelligence and you understand what is happening.

By the way, that’s not me saying that AI is a bubble and won’t amount to anything. No, it IS going to change our lives. But it’s not OpenAI that is going to pull it off. Or, let’s hope it won’t be OpenAI because that doesn’t bode well on the ethics side of things.

OpenAI was started as a non-profit- doing “AI Safety Research”. But under Altman it quickly devolved into one of the largest money grabs of all time.

The Great Conflict of Interest

Altman loves to tell Congress he has no equity in OpenAI. "I'm doing this because I love it," he says, wearing the humble-billionaire mask of a tech-world Batman.

While Altman may not have direct shares in the "nonprofit" (which is now very much a for-profit), he is heavily invested in every single resource OpenAI needs to survive:

• The Data: He owned a massive stake in Reddit and sat on its board. While the late Aaron Swartz wanted to open knowledge to the world, Altman helped OpenAI "aggressively scrape" Reddit's soul to feed the model.

• The Power: OpenAI needs electricity equivalent to the population of India. Altman is conveniently invested in Helion (nuclear fusion) and Oklo (nuclear fission).

• The Solution: When AI inevitably causes job loss and deepfake chaos, Altman is there with Worldcoin—a "global currency" that requires you to scan your eyeballs into a chrome orb to prove you’re human.

In a sense, Altman is a lot more dangerous than his enemy number one Elon Musk. Musk was one of the cofounders of OpenAI in 2016 and has criticized Altman extensively for unethical behaviour. The difference between Musk and Altman is that Musk has no filter - while Altman has many layers of filters.

The Circular Ponzi of 2025

The most staggering part of the OpenAI "economy" is its circularity. It’s a Three Stooges routine played out with billions of dollars.

This is the complete picture:

What you’re looking at in the picture above isn't an economy; it's a closed-loop life support system. And who is the "backstop" when the $1 trillion bill comes due and the "shared abundance" hasn't arrived? According to OpenAI’s own CFO, it’s you. The taxpayer. The government is being positioned as the ultimate guarantor of Altman’s ambition.

The Bottom Line

Sam Altman is asking society to sign over its identity and its resources in exchange for a future where "energy costs trend to zero" and "all diseases are cured." It’s a beautiful vision. But so was the 50,000-user base of Loopt.

If the promises are lies, we aren't just losing a startup. We’re losing the grid, the economy, and the very concept of a "trusted identity." And to whom - to people like Altman and Peter Thiel. People with questionable moral compasses. Not in it for humanity’s benefit like they’re claiming but for the cold hard cash that they will be able to generate.

Before we hand over the last of the eggs, we might want to check if the man holding the basket actually knows how to bake a cake—or if he’s just really good at selling the smell of one.

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