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AI firms’ self-serving warning on tech’s existential risk
There is a method to the frontier AI labs’ marketing madness. They claim that AI will not only replace workers and expand the potential market from software budgets to labour-saving applications, but also that the existential risk associated with the technology justifies curtailing additional capital spending
Brian Judge
16 Sep 2026
OpenAI and Anthropic will soon have to explain to investors why they are each supposedly worth US$2 trillion to US$3 trillion. They will probably draw from the same template that Elon Musk used for the SpaceX initial public offering ( IPO ) in June. By presenting a modestly profitable satellite launch and telecoms business attached to a tremendously unprofitable artificial intelligence ( AI ) start-up as a vehicle for “mak[ing] humanity multiplanetary”, Musk achieved a valuation far above what the company’s financials justify.
