Hello there.

Ladies and gentlemen, have we got a show for you! Collectively, they’ve taken on Elon, the Pentagon, and the American people themselves. Now, they’re finally set to face off head-to-head!

In this issue:

Ding ding ding! And the fight’s underway - In this corner, IPO’ing at 1 trillion pounds, it’s OpenAI!

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Well… here we go.

According to multiple reports, OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO, possibly within days. A public debut could land as soon as September. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are reportedly leading the charge, which means Wall Street is already steaming its suits.

Let’s zoom out for a sec. OpenAI is burning through cash at a legendary pace and still hasn't figured out how to actually make consistent money, but investors are so hyped on AI that nobody seems to care. The company raised over $180 billion from investors who are now desperate to see some kind of return, which is why they're rushing to go public. CEO Sam Altman just beat Elon Musk in court over a lawsuit about whether OpenAI broke its nonprofit promises, so that drama's finally settled right before the IPO drops.

What makes this extra spicy is that OpenAI's main rival, Anthropic, is reportedly raising money at a $900 billion valuation and pulling in $30 billion in annual revenue. That's actually more than OpenAI, which means this IPO could either validate the entire AI investment thesis or expose just how overvalued everything has gotten. Either way, Microsoft is about to have the best week ever since they're OpenAI's biggest partner and basically own a chunk of the company's cloud infrastructure.

So yeah. If you thought 2024 was the year of AI hype, buckle up. 2026 might be the year it gets priced in for real.

What if the “go to college, get a comfy office job” formula isn’t the big brain move anymore?

That’s basically what Randstad’s CEO just said on CNBC, pointing out that while fresh graduates are struggling to land entry-level office jobs, blue-collar workers are cashing in on a 30% wage bump since 2022. We're talking electricians, HVAC techs, and fiber network installers pulling in serious money while college grads send out their 47th unanswered LinkedIn application.

So it seems AI isn't killing all jobs, it's just reshaping which ones actually pay. The CEO of the world's biggest recruitment firm literally told CNBC that "the days of going to college and doing something in an office, they are over." Meanwhile, AT&T is desperately hunting for people who can climb telephone poles and install fiber networks because, shocker, robots can't do that yet. The company plans to drop around $38 billion over five years hiring these workers, and they're struggling to find enough people willing to take the jobs.

For anyone figuring out their next move: AI skills still get you a 25% pay bump if you're entering the workforce. But if you're good with your hands and don't mind working outside, there's never been a better time to skip the student loans and learn a trade. Your TikTok algorithm probably won't tell you that, but the data doesn't lie.

In this episode of TWiT, the hosts unpack a week where China’s AI ecosystem accelerates at full speed, Silicon Valley wrestles with its own contradictions, and the cracks in America’s tech advantage become harder to ignore.

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That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake