MY TAKE
This week confirms something I’ve been saying for months. Samuel and OpenAI as the monopoly of artificial intelligence have failed.
And honestly, it was only a matter of time. When you have Google with infinite resources, Anthropic with the best technical team on the planet, and Meta giving away open source models, you can’t fall asleep at the wheel… Sam.
How brutal it must be to be OpenAI’s CEO.. I’d like to try it just for a day, but they haven’t answered my email…
Altman knows it. Hence the CODE RED.
But what worries me most isn’t OpenAI. It’s Apple.
Look, losing your General Counsel, whatever that actually is, is normal. Losing your head of environmental policy, also normal. But when on top of that your Machine Learning lead walks out and your VP of design bolts to Meta, you have a serious problem. This isn’t turnover.
This is an exodus.
Last one out at Apple, turn off the lights
Apple has spent two years selling us that Siri was going to get better. That AI was coming. That Vision Pro was going to be revolutionary. And here we are. Siri is still useless. Vision Pro gathers dust in the stores (those who know me know that me not having bought one is a signal… I buy everything:))
And the talent is leaving for the competition.
I’ve heard it might be a strategy to pick up the scraps of AI when it all blows up.. risky, to say the least….
Databricks is worth more than most countries. And Google is shipping tools that do in thirty seconds what used to take an automation team.
I see it going badly. 2026 is going to be every man for himself. Those not executing at wartime speed are going to disappear.
OpenAI gets it. Apple doesn’t yet.
THE BOMBSHELL OF THE WEEK
OpenAI in a state of emergency
On Monday, December 2, Sam Altman did something he hadn’t done since the board chaos of 2023: he declared “CODE RED”, the highest level of internal alert at OpenAI.
The trigger was clear. Google launched Gemini 3 in November and the benchmarks don’t lie: 37.4 vs 31.64 on Humanity’s Last Exam. For the first time since ChatGPT changed the world, OpenAI no longer has the best model on the market.
But there’s more. According to the Washington Post this week, ChatGPT’s user growth has been flat since the summer. Meanwhile, Anthropic and Google are closing the gap at a worrying pace.
In the internal memo, Altman was unusually blunt with his employees: “Vibes out there will be rough for a bit.” Translation: brace yourselves for difficult months. He announced daily calls for the improvements team, asked for temporary transfers between departments, and made it clear that ChatGPT needs to be faster, more reliable, and more personalized. Now.
The price of this urgency: several products go into the freezer. Pulse, the personal assistant they’d been developing for months, gets delayed. Same for their advertising plans and the AI agents for health and shopping.
The only good news Altman offered: next week they launch a new reasoning model that, according to internal evaluations, beats Gemini 3. We’ll see if the market agrees.
POWER MOVES
Apple is bleeding talent like it hasn’t since 2011
On Thursday, December 4, Apple announced two more departures from its executive team: Katherine Adams, the woman who has led all of the company’s legal affairs as General Counsel, and Lisa Jackson, the former Obama EPA administrator who had spent a decade running Apple’s environmental and policy initiatives. Adams leaves at the end of 2026, Jackson in January.
But these two exits are not an isolated case. They’re part of something much bigger.
Just this week we also learned that John Giannandrea, the man Apple poached from Google to lead its entire Machine Learning and AI strategy, retires in the spring of 2026. And Alan Dye, the VP of Human Interface Design who has defined how Apple products look for a decade, is going straight to Meta to build a new design studio.
Fortune said it without mincing words on Friday: it’s the biggest leadership shakeup at Apple since Steve Jobs’s death in 2011.
What’s going on in Cupertino? The short answer: a crisis on two fronts. On one hand, Siri remains a joke compared to ChatGPT and Gemini, and the AI delays keep piling up. On the other, Vision Pro hasn’t found traction in the market. While Apple loses senior talent, Meta is scooping it up with open arms.
Jennifer Newstead will take over as the new General Counsel on March 1, 2026. She has work ahead of her.
MONEY TALKS
Castelion raises 350 million for hypersonic missiles
A defense startup founded by former SpaceX employees just closed a Series B round of three hundred fifty million dollars. That brings its total funding to four hundred sixty-four million.
Who’s investing? Altimeter Capital and Lightspeed lead. Also participating: a16z, General Catalyst, and Avenir.
What are they building? A hypersonic missile called Blackbeard for the US Army and Navy. And a thousand-acre manufacturing campus in New Mexico.
Their goal is to produce thousands of missiles per year. The traditional industry produces dozens. In 2025 they already completed more than twenty test flights.
Databricks marches toward an IPO at 134 billion
Databricks is negotiating to raise at least two billion dollars. The pre-money valuation would be one hundred thirty-four billion.
For context, that’s thirty-two times its projected 2025 revenue.
Its Series K round in September was oversubscribed twenty times. The current valuation exceeds one hundred billion.
CEO Ali Ghodsi says it wouldn’t be a surprise if they’re public within a year. The IPO is expected in the first or second quarter of 2026.
PRODUCT SECRETS
Google Workspace Studio: no-code AI agents
Google launched Workspace Studio on December 3. Now any user can create artificial intelligence agents using natural language.
How does it work? You describe what you want in plain language. For example: “Remind me every Friday to update my tracker.” And Gemini 3 builds the automation for you.
It works across Gmail, Drive, Sheets, and all the Workspace apps. It also integrates with Asana, Jira, Mailchimp, and Salesforce.
The early results are impressive. Alpha users executed more than twenty million tasks in thirty days. Karcher cut its manual planning time by ninety percent.
Available since December 3 for companies with Workspace business, enterprise, or education.
GPT-5.1-Codex-Max arrives in GitHub Copilot
OpenAI launched GPT-5.1-Codex-Max in public preview for GitHub Copilot on December 4.
What makes it special? A compaction system that keeps massive tasks coherent. We’re talking millions of tokens.
It’s optimized for multi-file refactors, complex agent loops, and persistent continuous integration tasks. It automatically handles session state across multiple context windows.
Available for Copilot Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Works in VS Code, on github dot com, in GitHub Mobile, and on the command line.
Meta delays its Phoenix glasses to 2027
An internal memo from Maher Saba, vice president of Reality Labs, reveals that Meta is delaying its Phoenix mixed reality glasses. They move from the second half of 2026 to the first half of 2027.
The reason? More room to perfect the details. And recent feedback from Zuckerberg: make the business sustainable.
What do we know about the product? A goggles-type form factor connected to an external device. Similar to Vision Pro. Weight around one hundred grams. Lower resolution and performance than Vision Pro.
What IS coming in 2026? Puffin. A more compact mixed reality headset.
Thanks for reading me.
Onward