OpenAI's daily active users are stagnating, and subscription revenue growth is slowing, suggesting that the company might achieve less than half of its 2026 revenue goals. This situation could position OpenAI as a prime example of the AI infrastructure bubble, with a significant amount of infrastructure expected to come online by 2026 that may not be needed. The availability of over 45 ZFlops of FP16 accelerated compute by late 2026, up from around 15 ZFlops today, will likely exceed the demand for model training and inference, especially as the cost of compute for a given level of model intelligence continues to decrease rapidly. This scenario suggests that OpenAI could be experiencing its peak, akin to Yahoo's peak around the year 2000. This matters because it highlights potential overinvestment in AI infrastructure and the risk of unmet growth expectations in the tech industry.
