OpenAI is not dead yet, wants to go for a walk

Amazon announced on Tuesday that its Prime Air drone delivery service will expand to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase from its current footprint, bringing drone deliveries to tens of millions of customers. Separately, Uber and Zipline are partnering to scale drone delivery across the United States, with Zipline drones delivering Uber Eats orders before the end of the year and Uber investing in Zipline.

OpenAI is not dead yet, wants to go for a walk How bad can one quarter be? OpenAI is about to find out. Wednesday. The United States is buying back more of its own debt https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/treasury-announces-upscaled-buyback-operation-for-longer-term-debt-sending-yields-lower.html in a bid to steady borrowing costs rising around the world https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-has-few-answers-bond-rout-puts-fiscal-plans-risk-2026-08-19/ , rattling nations that run in the red. Stocks are mixed this morning amidst a slow week, with few large companies reporting quarterly results and economic data. Today, we’re looking at drone deliveries, the rapid implosion of data center polling, and whether or not we should write OpenAI off after a slow second quarter. To work — Alex 📈 Trending Up: Borrowing costs https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/global-bond-markets-catch-on-fire … blowing it globally https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-19/anxiety-grips-pacific-allies-as-trump-pulls-back … big chips https://www.reuters.com/technology/cerebras-launches-new-server-chip-system-designed-speed-ai-chatbots-2026-08-19/ … elections in Ukraine https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-18/zelenskyy-s-popular-ex-minister-calls-for-ukrainian-election … compute demand https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/19/openais-overhead-will-rise-20-percent-for-some-workloads-as-it-hardens-security/5289303 … building the panopticon https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/ … Block’s open-source chops https://venturebeat.com/orchestration/blocks-new-apache-2-0-agent-workspace-berd-works-across-models-and-harnesses-stores-conversation-history-locally … new decacorns https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-19/ai-startup-temporal-in-talks-for-a-valuation-of-at-least-12-billion … climate change https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-is-cooking-europes-oceans-world-weather-attribution-mediterranean-sea/ … 📉 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html Trending Down: The North American Trade War — for three days https://www.axios.com/2026/08/19/trump-canada-tariffs-50-percent-postponed … Chinese chips for Chinese labs https://www.ft.com/content/6c5650fb-969d-4d4e-80d6-8d11002a8cf7 … price wars https://venturebeat.com/ai/glm-5-3-hits-the-api-at-1-4-4-4-per-million-tokens … EU-China relations https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3364599/china-blocks-firms-aiding-eus-jdcom-probe-regulatory-clash-deepens?utm source=rss feed … good corporate governance https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-prepares-supervoting-power-founders-readies-mega-ipo … peace in the West Taiwan Sea https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-completes-first-stage-work-disputed-south-china-sea-reef-images-show-2026-08-19/ … Drone delivery goes into overdrive We’re at the cusp of an age in which deliveries being flown to your doorstep may be a common sight. As with self-driving cars, after years of slow and halting development, delivery drones have finally reached commercialization. Amazon said https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-expansion on Tuesday it will bring its Prime Air delivery service to “nearly 500 cities and towns in the United States by the end of 2026,” a 6x increase over its current footprint. The expansion is expected to bring quick drone deliveries to “communities with tens of millions of customers.” That’s not all. Uber and Zipline, the drone delivery startup that started off delivering critical medical supplies, are working together to “scale drone delivery across the United States.” The partnership will see Uber investing in Zipline no details yet , and Zipline drones delivering Uber Eats orders before the end of the year. - In mid-July, Zipline said https://www.zipline.com/newsroom/zipline-accelerates-u-s-growth-with-13x-marketplace-expansion-new-leadership-hires-and-launches-in-austin-and-cleveland the number of businesses “offering delivery via the Zipline app grew 13X” in the first two quarters of 2026. - I interviewed Zipline’s CEO a few months back; you can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFwe-Q-RTu0 if you care about the regulatory requirements of expanding autonomous delivery. There’s more. Early in July, Irish drone delivery company Manna said https://www.manna.aero/blog/manna-announces-major-us-expansion it is starting its delivery operations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and also intends to make the city its manufacturing hub and customer support nexus. Finally, DoorDash just weeks ago unveiled DoorDash Air https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-air , the company’s drone delivery program that will use hardware and software developed in-house. DoorDash frames its drones as a similar effort to its Dot sidewalk delivery robots in that it’s doing the work by itself. - Uber, in contrast, spun out Serve Robotics after buying Postmates, and recently divested the small public company. Drone deliveries are about to evolve from a rare community phenomenon to an option people may be able to choose across the country. By the end of next year, I suspect that drone deliveries will be as unremarkable as wheeled ‘bots on the sidewalk delivering food to starving typers. Everyone hates data centers Remember when I pointed out recently https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/all-that-data-center-agitation-is-working/ that hating data centers is a bipartisan effort? It’s getting worse: Axios writes https://www.axios.com/2026/08/19/data-centers-ai-political-opinion that “Republicans and AI CEOs are in full panic mode watching politicians and the public turn on the physical engines of AI growth.” Of course they are. Americans favor https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2089850457594183838 an Amazon distribution center being built in their community 68% to 24%, giving the facilities the same level of citizen blessing that new factories and solar farms enjoy. Nuclear energy? 34% in favor, 57% opposed to new construction in their communities. A mere 27% of domestic voters favor new data centers built to power AI, while 62% are opposed. Oof. The data center backlash is so severe that in Texas, some GOP voters are considering swapping parties https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/19/how-data-centers-and-power-lines-could-turn-texas-governors-race-blue-01041065 in order to more stringently oppose data center projects in their state. Texas Governor Greg Abbott just earlier this month put new restrictions on data center construction in his state after companies signaled interest in far more energy than the Texas grid has available. His new rules are already changing builders’ behavior https://texasfarmbureau.org/data-centers-commit-to-abbotts-standards/ and have resulted in some projects getting the axe. Naturally, everyone on X is mad at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro https://x.com/GovernorShapiro/status/2089780762815992002 , whose recent executive order https://www.pa.gov/governor/newsroom/2026-press-releases/governor-shapiro-signs-executive-order-on-data-center-developmen puts limits on data center construction, ends fast-track permits, blocks NDAs, and requires project developers to bring their own power or upgrade local generation and distribution assets . He also demands that new centers create at least 50 long-term jobs. It’s a somewhat standard package of rules, as far as these things go. The technorati are furious, however. But here’s the reality: This is a big, diverse, and often locally-run nation. What makes sense in our collective spreadsheets doesn’t always translate to ground reality in other people’s communities. Tech believes it can yell loudly enough on social media to bully politicians into changing their behavior. With data centers polling as poorly as they are, and their development requiring as much speed, capital and end-runs around smaller polities as we’ve seen, well, what did you expect? I am in favor of lots of data centers, lots of power generation, and also lots of investment in ways to maximize compute while minimizing impact on communities. There’s a big damn middle road here, and I think that the governors discussed are driving that middle path. Sorry Two bad quarters do not a dead company make Is OpenAI washed? Done? Kaput? Cooling in the alley? Lots of folks seem to think so. Here’s why: Subscribe to Cautious Optimism to unlock the rest. Become a paying subscriber of Cautious Optimism to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. Subscribe https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/subscribe/?utm source=Cautious+Optimism&utm medium=website&utm campaign=article-paywall