Is AI juggernaut OpenAI becoming too big to fail?

become a publicly traded company one day. Already, some are talking about how OpenAI might be the first trillion-dollar initial public offering.

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In a blog post Tuesday, OpenAI Chair Bret Taylor marked the moment, declaring: “Built to benefit everyone.”

It’s the kind of altruistic talk Altman is known for as he predicts that superintelligent AI—or AGI—will help cure cancer and save humanity.

"I think AGI is probably necessary for humanity to survive—our problems seem too big to solve...without better tools," Altman tweeted a few years ago.

Microsoft, which will hold a 27% stake, saw its shares rise on the latest news, pushing its market value past $4 trillion. (Later in the week, Nvidia, which had previously announced plans to invest $100 billion into OpenAI, became the first $5 trillion company.)

The linkages between these tech behemoths and the stock market’s dependence on them are notable. The lessons of the financial crisis earlier this century weren't just that the banks were too big to fail, they were too interconnected to fail.