Welcome, everyone, to the Informations TI TV. My name is Ken Brown, sitting in for Akash Pasarika. It is Wednesday, April 29th. We'll kick things off with news that OpenAI models are coming to AWS. Our Amazon reporter joins us with the details. Plus, the information has exclusive reporting on OpenAI's projected subscriber growth. We'll hear from the reporter behind the story. And we'll also check in with our AI reporter, Raka Drew, who is covering the Musk OpenAI trial. Then a look at a major Bitcoin conference happening in Las Vegas. And later, our Editor-in-Chief Jessica Lesson sits down with five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova to talk about her new podcast, Pretty Tough. We'll play an excerpt from that conversation. It's going to be a fun show, so let's get going. OpenAI models are coming to Amazon Web Services just one day after OpenAI and Microsoft rewrote the terms of their partnership, ending Microsoft's exclusive hold. So what does that actually mean for customers in the AI cloud battle? Joining me now is the information's Amazon reporter, Catherine Perloff. Catherine, what was announced? So, you know, for a while, one of AWS's big lackings was that it didn't have OpenAI models to give to its customers because of OpenAI's exclusive relationship with Microsoft. And now, Aaron Holmes, I think, has come on and talked about this, too, but Microsoft OpenAI made that relationship not exclusive anymore. AWS is now selling OpenAI models in Bedrock, which is their inference service, which is basically just a platform for running various models. Prior to this announcement, you could access Anthropic there. You could access a lot of open source models there. Amazon's own AI models they've been developing called Nova, but not OpenAI, which is obviously a big, important model for a lot of companies. So, yeah, that is what they announced yesterday at an event in California. they also announced Codex, OpenAI's coding product being available in AWS. And this kind of agent product that the two OpenAI is developing with AWS, they had announced that two months ago when Amazon originally announced it was investing in OpenAI. But they shared a couple more details of that product as well. But yeah, the big thing is, you know, OpenAI now live in AWS, essentially. Well, and so you say it's going to come, you'll access it through bedrock. So how does that work? Is that going to work the same way that they access all the other, you know, AIs like Anthropics? Anthropics? Yes, yes. So that means that, like, you know, AWS customers who are, you know, buying AI or using AI via AWS can use it in the same place. And I think the reason this is important is, like, you know, AWS customers could have bought OpenAI models directly from OpenAI, and they did. some of them did. But, you know, a lot, some AWS customers would prefer everything run within AWS infrastructure because that is how they know it is secure and they don't want their data running between a million different clouds. There are different opinions on this, you know, different types of enterprises have different sort of tolerance for different, you know, risk potentially with running on different clouds. But, you know, I think this opens it up to a lot of AWS customers who just didn't think it was necessarily worth it to have to call out to Microsoft Azure's cloud service if they wanted to run OpenAI models. Got it. And then, but you reported earlier this week that some AWS customers weren't exactly excited about this. So why is there this muted reaction? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I know. I guess I said it is a big deal because for a while it's been like, this isn't the thing AWS has. And I actually was kind of surprised when I talked to customers that they weren't more clamoring to use open AI. It seems like that's been the thing that AWS has been lacking, as I said. But, you know, first of all, as we've reported a lot about, Anthropic has really been, you know, doing gangbusters in the enterprise market. And at the beginning of sort of the AI boom, I guess three or so years ago, if that's right, it feels like forever, then like, you know, the lack of OpenAI on AWS was a big deal because that was the cutting-edge model. Now Anthropic is seen as good, if not better. And so customers are used to happy with, you know, using Anthropic, but also other cheap models on Bedrock for their workloads. That includes, you know, there were fans of, like, DeepSeek, Quen, Amazon's own Nova models. These are all much cheaper alternatives. And they've been sort of, you know, happy to either use those or there are some businesses that are sort of happy to just buy OpenAI directly and weren't as uncomfortable using it through other clouds. But, you know, they already kind of have a system in place. It works for them. It's sort of like, OK, who cares? We have another, you know, we don't really need another thing, though, you know, we'll have to see because it hasn't come out yet. So it might change. But that was sort of the reaction I got from customers and people who talk to those customers. Right. And so is OpenAI doing anything? You know, if they are a little bit late, are they doing anything? Is there pricing? Do we have any idea of that? Are they going to try to get customers from the other models? I think so. I think it's, you know, I mean, I don't, you know, we're still kind of, it just launched and really AWS wasn't saying anything about this in the past two months, even though they, since they announced they were working with OpenAI, they really were not talking to customers at all about it. So we really don't, we don't know a ton of details about this new offering, how it's going to compare to Anthropic on AWS or how it's going to compare to other ways OpenAI is sold. But OpenAI is really focused on the enterprise. They have killed other products to focus on the enterprise, side quests, as they're called. And they also, also in a memo, an OpenAI executive highlighted that, you know, there was staggering demand from AWS customers. and the fact that they had only been available on Microsoft had limited them in some ways because they didn't have access to, you know, the huge group of enterprises that use AWS. You know, as I said from my reporting, I don't know. I don't know how big the demand is. They're saying it's staggering. We'll see, but, you know. Right. Yeah. And so pivoting away from AI to the cloud, does this change the cloud race? I mean, Azure and AWS are obviously huge rivals. Does it change anything or not really? I think that like you know it an interesting question I think that like AWS has been sort of the incumbent and this kind of gave Microsoft a leg up I you know momentum is you know a big thing And like if Microsoft had won some customers because of OpenAI maybe some of those customers want to stick there Another interesting point that came up in my discussions with customers is that because there is such a compute shortage and AI models can take a really long time to run there can be a lot of latency running AI models and products more customers are actually getting comfortable with multi This customer I talked to worked at a customer service software, had a customer service software company. And he was saying that they, you know, prefer to just switch between different clouds, depending on which is working the fastest when they're running AI workloads, because latency can be such a factor. So I do wonder if sort of, it does seem like, you know, AI is sort of kind of reframing the entire cloud market a little bit where, you know, is everyone more comfortable using more clouds? There's such a shortage. Everyone is trying to find capacity where they can. And I guess I think we have a little bit more time to shake out of how that all ends up and, you know, if AWS still stays, you know, the big market leader. But I think, yeah, I think we're kind of in the midst of a shakeup that hasn't been there for a while. So that's kind of exciting. Got it. Got it. Thanks, Catherine. That was Catherine Perloff, our Amazon reporter here at The Information. The Information published exclusive reporting about OpenAI subscriber growth. The company is forecasting a massive shift into its lower price subscription tier. My colleague, Sri Mupiti, published a story. She joins me now to share what she knows. Hi, Sri. Hi, Ken. How does OpenAI see the subscriber growth shifting this year? Totally. So OpenAI, in its latest projections as part of its fundraise, had projected that they're going to see a major shift towards its cheaper plan called ChatGPTGo. That price is about $8 a month in the US, but can be as low as $4 to $5 across other countries such as India, which is where ChatGPT Go was first launched. And what we see is essentially ChatGPT Plus, which is $20 a month, is now going to be less in terms of the number of consumers and subscribers that are actually subscribing to it. And we're going to see a large portion of that growth coming through ChatGPT Go. And so how dramatic is this shift from $20 subscription to an $8 ad-supported model? I mean, how is it going to play out for people who use it? It's going to be a major shift. So just for context, last year, 2025, ChatGPT had about 47 million or so subscribers, with 92% of that coming from ChatGPT Plus, the $20 plan. And now this year, OpenAI projects that it's going to be 92% of the 112 million or so subscribers that it projects for the year to actually be coming from ChatGPT Go. So it's essentially the opposite of where it was last year. So 92% from ChatTV Plus to now it's going to be 92% of ChatTV to Go. So that's a major shift. And essentially what it shows is that they're betting that as they launch this cheaper tier, they're going to actually see a major amount of subscribers actually subscribing to it, but also these more expensive subscribers switching to that cheaper plan. But they're going to make up for it with increase in advertising as well. So what's behind this move? Why is OpenAI doing this now? They're doing this now because I think it's a point to their broader shift of seeing advertising be a major driver of their future revenue growth. So by the end of the decade, OpenAI forecasts that the single largest segment revenue driver is actually going to come from ads. And so Chachapichico, not only will it have just this $8 plan, but it will also have ads available. And so they're betting that ads will sort of boost that growth, even at the expense of this cheaper plan. but also make ads available to free users. And so it's a push towards making ads a big revenue driver for them in the future. So the elephant in the room is Google, right? So how much about this is competing with Google where, I mean, Gemini is basically free, right? Totally. So Gemini is totally free. Alphabet also has a major ads revenue driver business. And so they already have proven out that ads is a business that works for them. They're the incumbent in the space. And so I think OpenAI is perhaps also competing to bring ChatGPT cheaper to users, especially as they forecast international growth to be a big revenue driver as well. And so I think that it's a way to be able to compete with Alphabet, but also they're facing competition from Anthropic on the B2B side. And so that'd be an interesting time for the company as well. So I guess it comes down to, you know, success here comes down to the user experience, right? And I know that the rivals have already been, you know, poking fun at them. But like, you know, if you get ads popping up on your searches or you feel like the search is not clean, right, it's being influenced by the ads, that could hurt them, right? Totally. I think that OpenAI faced a lot of pushback from potential users around like how ads will ruin consumer trust. But in recent months, they've said that their pilot has actually helped them cross over $100 million in annualized revenue. They forecast nearly over $2 billion in revenue at the end of this year. And so I think they're really betting ads to work. And they've also pushed out a blog post that kind of talks about how different consumer metrics, trust metrics haven't actually been impacted as much. And so I think it's just to see, though, it's still quite early. We have to see if they can actually pull off this huge mix shift from going from being a consumer subscription business to now being an ads business. But I think that it's still early to tell. It's too early to tell. Right, because they're saying ads are going to be the biggest revenue driver by 2030, right? I mean, obviously, ads power Google, they power Meta, but is this realistic for them? I think it's a huge risk for sure. They have to be able to pull off multiple aspects of their business. They continue driving user growth. Of course, they missed their user target of a billion users, weekly active users last year. There's also been reporting around them missing revenue targets. And so I think that there is a risk to will they actually be able to continue user growth, which is a key driver to being able to actually have ads make revenue because advertisers want to make sure that as many eyeballs as possible are seeing it. And so I think that there is a lot of risks that come with driving an ad business. But I think, again, it's still in the early innings. And so I'm excited to see what the next couple of months will look like. And this is a real split for them, right? Because they're making this big push into enterprise. And then they have this ad-supported consumer business, right? How is that going to play out for them? Totally. So on top of the consumer business, they also have a B2B business. They've made a big push towards this with forward deployment engineers that are basically going into large enterprises and actually helping them figure out where AI can boost, for example, big banks or pharmaceutical companies. use cases. And so I think that's an opportunity for OpenAI and that they're really focused on that. On top of that, they also have a number of other consumer bets, like the IO robotics, as well as other robotics bets. And so I think that'll be interesting for OpenAI as well. But again it a lot of sort of hands in different pies to kind of make it work And a lot of the growth on the consumer side back to that a lot of the growth they talking about is coming from outside the U right So how important is the ad, the shift to ads, how important is that to this strategy? Totally. So a lot of the largest markets are actually outside of the U.S., U.S., of course, being a top market as well. But you're going to see, for example, the average revenue per user likely be lower in international markets as compared to the U.S. and European markets. And so that's the same sort of playbook that Meta, Pinterest, Snap, and others, for example, who rely on similar types of business models have seen. And so I think that this shift towards ChatGPT Go as well as like a free tier allows them to perhaps court those types of users that may not have as much disposable income to spend at the $20 a month mark. And so I think that could be an opportunity for them to continue user growth, but also be able to monetize any areas that they can. Got it. Got it. Thank you, Sri. This is Sri Mupiti, our OpenAI and Anthropic reporter here at The Information. The Information's Rocket Drew is covering the Elon Musk OpenAI trial from the courtroom all week long. Here's his latest update for us on Elon Musk taking the stand. Elon Musk has taken the stand in his breach of charitable trust lawsuit against OpenAI. And in some sense, the past two years of litigation have all been building up to this. I mean, all those legal filings, those legal bills. If nothing else goes Musk's way in this case, at least he was able to drag OpenAI president Greg Brockman into a courtroom in front of a jury, and Musk was able to say his piece. Musk spent most of the two or so hours that he was questioned by his own lawyer explaining the context behind old emails, emails that were exchanged between the founders of OpenAI back in the early days. But Musk also had an opportunity to speak towards his motivations in founding OpenAI and how he wanted to make OpenAI a counterbalance to Google's influence in the AI race. In Musk's telling, he was concerned that Google didn't have the best interests of humanity at heart, especially after a conversation he had had with Larry Page, after which Musk walked away with the impression that Larry Page cared more about the interests of future AIs than of humanity as a whole. So, Musk discussed those motivations, some of his broader thoughts around AI safety and AI risks, and he also had the chance to talk a little bit about why he thinks the case is so important, and in his own words, he says that he thinks that OpenAI could set the precedent that companies that have the potential to operate profitable businesses could get started as non-profit charities, receive donations that are tax-deductible, and then someday convert to a for-profit corporation at the expense of taxpayers and the public. That's sort of the theory that he advanced at the start of his testimony. So we will hear a lot more from Musk. There's more to come. In particular, he hasn't yet been questioned by the other side, and you can bet that OpenAI's lawyers have a lot of questions to ask him. If they do get through with Musk's testimony, they will move on to testimony from Jared Birchall, who runs Elon Musk's family office and was involved in directing Musk's donations to OpenAI back in the early days. So that's what's coming up next in the Musk v. Altman trial. The biggest names in crypto are in Las Vegas this week for Bitcoin 2026. It's one of the largest annual crypto conferences in the world, and it brings together executives, investors, developers, and policymakers. One key focus, the Clarity Act, a bill that would finally define how crypto is regulated in the U.S. Senator Symphony Loomis said on stage that they plan to mark up the legislation in May and push it across the finish line. but can they actually get it done? Joining me now is Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, a leading trade association that promotes the use of digital assets in blockchain-based technologies. Cody is at the conference. Hi, Cody. Hey, good morning from Las Vegas. Good morning. Early for you. What is the chatter at this conference right now? It's all about the Clarity Act, as you mentioned. Every single person is asking, When are we going to get it? There's been a lot of fits and starts trying to move this bill. The next hurdle, as Senator Lummis has said, is the Senate Banking Committee needs to mark up this bill. We are optimistic that that will happen in May, as you mentioned. But this bill has taken the entire oxygen out of the room here at the conference. I've been amazed how whether it's from the institutions on the banking side or it's the crypto native companies or it's just the retail users that are here at the conference, everyone wants to know what's happening in Washington. So we've heard that this was going to get marked up in April, right? And so now we're saying May. What happens if it doesn't get done in May? Is this dead? It gets really difficult. I mean, we've already pushed this timeline, I think, as far as we can. There was initially a scheduled markup in January in the committee, and then that was canceled. And then you're right. There was a March deadline. There was an April deadline. Washington is famous for missing deadlines, but they can't miss this one. They can't miss the May deadline because it is an election season. And these members of the committee are going home to run their races and politics starts to drive policy the further you get in the year. If they miss this deadline, I really don't see a window when we're getting into the summer months of June, July, and then you're at August recess and they're really not in Washington for the rest of the year because of that election. So it needs to get done next month. So since we're talking politics. So what do you think is happening? What are you hearing around crypto in the midterms? Crypto is going to have a massive role in the midterms. I think crypto is looking at the success they had in 2024 and said, okay, we have now brought ourselves to the main stage. The political fundraising side of things was it really gave crypto muscle. They want to repeat, the industry as a whole wants to repeat that success from 2024. They're going to be very active. They are using this legislation, the Clarity Act right now, to see where members are going to vote, where the political parties are going to side, and they are using that as ammo going into the election. So I think crypto will be having a massive impact on the elections. You will see numbers in the hundreds of millions going into some of these races from the crypto industry. So what's interesting is, you know, going into the last election, you know, crypto was booming. Things were great. They had huge influence, obviously. They have a crypto friendly president. The industry has a crypto friendly president. But now we were in this crypto downturn. People have lost a bunch of money. New investors came into the stock market and invested in crypto stocks or stocks tied to crypto. And that hasn't worked out. So what is the vibe with the downturn and then the election and any influence? From a political standpoint, it hasn't really shifted, even though we've seen the market, as you said, go through this downturn. I think what's helped is that a lot of the news that has come out of the crypto industry even as the prices have dropped is the adoption and embrace from some of the traditional financial institutions BlackRock is coming out with a new digital asset product every day Morgan Stanley just came out with a new Bitcoin ETF That has really helped in continuing the motivation from the political side, getting members of Congress interested because they no longer view it as a trend or a fad. It is now here to stay because it is being integrated into the traditional financial system. So yes, the market going down, it's not great for anyone, But there's still the interest and I think the impact that crypto can have hasn't changed at all because there has been more of this embrace from the traditional financial space. And, you know, some of this goes back to the stablecoin legislation we had last year, which was, you know, has had a huge impact. Stablecoins are being adopted and, you know, by banks and the finance industry and, you know, working globally. I mean, is that is that sort of an example that you're pushing forward? Absolutely. The market has exploded in the US dollar backed stablecoin space since the Genius Act has passed. Imagine if this market structure legislation passes, how much capital is going to come into the digital asset market. There is a huge section right now in the draft legislation on permissible activities for banks in the digital asset space. The amount of capital from the traditional side that will come in post a Clarity Act passage and enactment will be amazing to see. So I would expect that we would see a lot of what has happened post Genius Act. The stablecoin market has exploded. We would see the larger digital asset market explode if clarity has passed. That's why it's so critical to get this passed now. Everyone wants it. Everyone is at the table. Everyone is motivated from the most traditional financial institution to the most crypto native company, to the Democrats, to Republicans, to the White House. They all want it. So we just have to get all the pieces in place right now to finally get it passed. Well, there is a bit of a battle going on. I mean, you say that banks all want it, which, you know, may or may not be true, but they want it in a way that's friendly to them. Right. And so the fight over, and this goes back to stablecoin, some of the ways, some of the internal details of this bill is still going on. Right. Absolutely. We're still in the negotiating phase. But to your point, the banks need this bill because of not only that title that I alluded to that gives the permissible activities for the banks, but also on the stablecoin yield piece. They have been fighting to prohibit stablecoin rewards or stablecoin yield. The only way that they can get what they want is by passing market structure legislation. Otherwise, the status quo of the Genius Act remains in place and stablecoin rewards can exist. Now, we're fighting for stablecoin rewards, and we have been in these negotiations every day to make sure stablecoin rewards can exist and continue to persist. And I think they will. But the banks are at the table. They know they need this bill. And that's why I feel so optimistic that we can get this done. Even though there are differences in opinion and the negotiations can be pretty tense and pretty stressful, everyone is motivated to get it done and to get a deal. So I think eventually we're getting to a point right now where the calendar is telling us, hey, we need to start striking deals immediately. That's why I'm so optimistic that Senator Lummis has said, hey, look to May, we're going to get a markup. There's a congressional recess next week. And then I'm circling the week of May 11th for that Senate banking markup. And then I would expect the bill to move pretty fast after that. Well, I hope the circle that you put around May 11th is, it plays out for you. It's a tough fight. We appreciate the time. Thank you, Cody. That was Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber. We've got a great one to close out the show. Five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova is stepping into the podcast world with her new show, Pretty Tough, focused on how ambition and success are defined and discussed. The information's editor-in-chief, Jessica Lesson, sat down with Sharapova for a wide-ranging conversation covering the podcast, her investing strategy, and her career on and off the court. I want to play a moment from that interview where Sharapova talks about the mindset behind toughness. From a young age, I mean, sport taught me a great lesson is that, you know, you don't need to shy away from being a tough cookie. And I got to do it, you know, in front of millions of people. And by the way, that doesn't mean that it's just winning in front of millions of people. A lot of times you are at your worst and you are having really tough moments and you're making errors that everyone expects you to make a winner of. And so I think, you know, showing up to yourself and showing up to the crowd and showing up in press conferences, I think there are so many lessons along the way that I got to learn and grow from. You know, I got to grow in front of the public eye, and now I somewhat have to unlearn, you know, a technique in the press where I'm used to answering questions and now kind of learn exactly, you know, engage and learn a new form of interviewing, which I've really enjoyed because there's like there's something on the line. You know, there's a delivery that you have to make and there's homework you have to do. And, you know, I love that. I love being unfamiliar with something and working really hard toward a goal to to do it well. Do you think, and I'm saying this in a dramatic way for the sake of making a point, but do you think there are parts of the culture that have felt weak or have felt like we have pulled back from sort of embracing that toughness or, you know, we've like or women struggle to find it now? Like, is there something about this moment that makes it feel like this is an important time to be having the conversations? Or is the timing right to do it? I think absolutely. It's never too early to start. And I think every woman and every individual, for that matter, finds their own time and their own growth and their own version of confidence. Like, you know, we all talk about being confident and being, you know, and speaking our truths, but that doesn't come right away. I think we have to be comfortable in our skins and in our approach, and that takes time to develop. It took me years to develop that on and off the court, you know, and now I get to apply it and, you know, in a different aspect. But, you know, there is an element of being mentally strong that I got to carry for all those years. And now I get to apply in business and I speak about it from an honest perspective, right? I've never shied away from it. I don't want to shy away from it on this podcast series because it's really important to get to the bottom of the things quicker than later. Like, why wait for that honesty? You can catch our full interview with Maria Sharapova on YouTube. That does it for today's show. A reminder, we are on this stream Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. If you can't make it then, episodes are available on theinformation.com, our YouTube channel, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow us on social media on X, Instagram, and TikTok. I'm already excited for our next show. Have the great rest of your Wednesday. Bye-bye for now.
