Why OpenAI’s new chip will help it go faster

OpenAI's new custom AI chip is designed to accelerate model training and inference, reducing reliance on external suppliers like Nvidia. The move aims to cut costs and boost performance as OpenAI scales its AI systems, positioning it to compete more aggressively in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Why OpenAI’s new chip will help it go faster Today, we're looking at tech regulation, Meta's latest copycat product, the EV profit game, and why OpenAI's new AI chip matters. Welcome to . Cautious Optimism https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/ , a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat Wednesday. I made two mistakes yesterday. First, the episode of This Week in AI I hosted will be out tomorrow, not yesterday evening. Second, I mixed up Baseten’s Series E https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-baseten-s-300m-series-e/ lead investors IVP and CapitalG led , with its Series F https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260622645563/en/Baseten-Raises-%241.5-Billion-to-Power-the-Next-Era-of-AI-Inference investors Altimeter Capital, Conviction, and Spark Capital led . Apologies In other housekeeping news, my old TechCrunch comrade-in-arms Ron Miller and I are cooking up a few pieces; they may arrive in your inbox outside our normal publication cadence. Today, we’re looking at tech regulation, Meta’s latest copycat product, the EV profit game, and, finally, why OpenAI’s new AI chip matters. To work — Alex 📈 Trending Up Cybersecurity Rorschach tests https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-mythos-ai-classified-systems-vulnerabilities-testing-3e8762c0527c4d8ed657cbe48c84a718 … mercury in Europe https://www.politico.eu/article/3-reasons-why-europe-cant-stop-sweating-this-week/ … Chinese robots on American shores https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/23/lutnick-china-robots-commerce-00972576 … irony https://www.politico.eu/article/qatari-royal-snaps-up-berlusconis-notorious-villa/ … electricity costs for data centers https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/24/ai-data-centers-tech-companies-congress-energy-costs.html ? … solopreneurs https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-age-of-the-solopreneur … compute markets https://x.com/OrnnExchange/status/2069760195010367787 … SPACS? Really https://www.wsj.com/finance/agility-maker-of-humanlike-robots-to-go-public-in-2-5-billion-spac-deal-62c3cb32 ? … Tech regulation: Looks like the Trump administration didn’t really mean voluntary when it commanded the creation https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/ of a “voluntary framework with AI developers” that would give the government access to new AI models a month before they’re launched. The New York Times reports https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/business/meta-ai-government-reviews-security.html that the White House “is pressing Meta to submit its artificial intelligence models for voluntary review.” Meta, for its part, is negotiating with the Commerce Department, though the newspaper cautions that it is “unclear whether the two parties will be able to reach an agreement.” RIP the freewheeling AI era, brought low by government concern that AI’s getting too capable. Naturally, the tech-right is quiet about this new take on AI regulation. Regardless, there’s a larger front of technology regulation forming https://x.com/NicoPerrino/status/2069062181786697905 around the world that we need to keep an eye on: The Kids Online Safety Act is regaining momentum in the House https://punchbowl.news/article/tech/house-kosa/ including age verification for parts of the Internet, though it has fewer social media rules than other versions of the bill . Over in the U.K., social media services are set to be banned for under-16s, and Greece is following with a ban on social media for kids under 15 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgx1x742x5o . Guess what Canada is cooking up https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/canada-introduces-legislation-ban-social-media-children-under-16-2026-06-10/ ? Zooming out, we can see a mix of moves playing out simultaneously: There’s the scramble to sort out what AI regulation is needed the U.S. wants chatbots to be clearly labled as non-human, for example ; there’s concern over how much protection minors need on the Internet; and we also have speech restrictions https://boingboing.net/2026/04/02/4chans-lawyer-wrote-a-free-speech-bill-for-the-uk.html both abroad and at home https://www.wsj.com/business/media/fccs-brendan-carr-planning-early-review-of-disneys-abc-tv-licenses-83f46f2d here in the United States https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/trump-threatens-to-jail-reporter-over-iran-rescue-mission-leak-airman-f-15-fighter-jet-crash . - Regulation of the Internet is popular with voters, according to polling. People here in the States think that AI is advancing too quickly https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/ and have little faith in the government and the private sector to regulate it effectively. Hell, the demand for tech regulation is anything but new https://news.gallup.com/poll/329666/views-big-tech-worsen-public-wants-regulation.aspx . - Why now? Tech products and services have never been more pervasive, and public discontent with elements of the AI era is only adding fire to regulatory conversations. - As a free speech and free trade advocate, I find restrictions on speech no matter how they are sold https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/5re9s1/how would you like this wrapped john jonik/ lightbox worrying prima facie . And I don’t think that merely debatingto put age gates is the right fight to have. where Chasing the wave: I can’t recall a technology trend that Meta hasn’t jumped on. Remember when the company wanted to get into the newsletter game https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/04/bulletin-newsletter-shut-down-meta-facebook/ ? The latest burst of innovation from Facebook’s parent company is a prediction market. Yes, after Polymarket and Kalshi showed how much people like ~~gambling~~ hedging market risk, companies like Robinhood and FanDuel jumped in on the fun. Now, the Zuck cometh: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/technology/meta-prediction-markets-app.html?unlocked article code=1.sVA.S8Cw.w-vIeTlfjE3Q&smid=url-share Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video-game-like points system instead, one person said . If this app is released and takes off, I presume Meta will find a way to monetize the action — its advertising prowess grants it ample ways to extract cash from almost any product. Kalshi’s revenue run rate got close to $2 billion https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/jd-vance-discovers-stakeholder-capitalism/ recently. That’s real money, and what company is best at profiting from the hard work of others? - Soon, all media will be sport-betting-pilled analyst commentary about off-screen games, interrupted regularly by insurance advertisements. - More seriously: More competition in the prediction market game should lead to lower consumer prices as providers battle for market share. Calls for government price control: POTUS is playing the hits by complaining that oil companies are selling their wares at market prices. In a new post on his personal social network, Trump said https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116803130747198847 : The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping like a rock In other words, customers are being “gouged.” I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing Price ceilings for gasoline? What could possibly go wrong? 📉 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html Trending Down 📉 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html The NSA’s access to Mythos or Fable https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/us/politics/nsa-lost-access-anthropic-tool.html … the free market https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/24/republicans-debate-insulin-price-cap-00972910 … spare SpaceXAI compute https://www.theinformation.com/articles/xai-bets-groks-racy-side ? … future token demand https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/23/ai-memory-startup-focused-on-cutting-token-costs-raises-98-million.html ? … GLM-5.2 dominance https://x.com/RamaswmySridhar/status/2069460464371954171 … using cash effectively https://x.com/firstadopter/status/2069459754347323748 Rewarding winners: The former Alphabet staffer who built the first Google Workspace CLI was fired for that work, he wrote https://x.com/JPoehnelt/status/2069482265953087602 , only for his employer to announce something similar a few days later. I tell this story as a reminder that there is no way to run a very large company without having people acting like idiots. Alphabet’s bureaucracy https://fortune.com/2023/02/16/alphabet-google-former-employee-praveen-seshadri-essay-criticizes-bureaucratic-maze/ is notorious https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Google-E9079-RVW83350490.htm , in fairness to its rivals. Expensive trucks: One of my favorite startups, Slate, is trying the impossible. Its low-cost, highly-customizable, small-footprint EV trucks won’t burn cash on a COGS basis to sell, even in the earliest days of production https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/24/slate-ev-pickup-truck-ceo-business-goals.html : Slate CEO Peter Faricy said every vehicle produced by the Michigan-based EV startup … will be gross margin positive. That will lead the company to positive free cash flow and earnings before taxes, depreciation, and amortization by 2027, he said. An EV startup with positive free cash flow and presumably adjusted EBITDA? Wild. Rivian was gross-margin negative https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-first-quarter-2026-financial-results last quarter on its automotive sales, while Lucid’s cash burn is crazy https://ir.lucidmotors.com/news-releases/news-release-details/lucid-announces-first-quarter-2026-financial-results . The two companies make higher-end EVs, though, and are therefore spending money like it’s 2021. Slate may be their complete inverse. Disclosure: I will probably buy a Slate truck at some point. OpenAI, the chip company Making AI chips is big business. I’ve known about companies like Etched LLM-specific ASICs and Tenstorrent modular AI accelerators for ages, and in recent months, we’ve seen a wave of fresh capital going into startups building AI-related chips and data center tech. Here’s a sampling: Subscribe to Cautious Optimism to unlock the rest. 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