OpenAI Hits ‘Code Red’ as Google’s Gemini Surges and Secret ‘Garlic’ Model Emerges

Key Takeaway: OpenAI has declared a “code red” to urgently upgrade ChatGPT while quietly building a new, more specialized model codenamed Garlic to fight off growing threats from Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.

More Insights:

• OpenAI is delaying projects like advertising, health/shopping agents, and a personal assistant (Pulse) to focus almost entirely on improving ChatGPT’s speed, reliability, personalization, and breadth of answers.

• Google’s Gemini models, boosted by the Nano Banana image generator, have helped grow Gemini’s monthly active users from 450M in July to 650M in October, pressuring ChatGPT’s user growth and engagement.

• Internal tests reportedly show OpenAI’s new Garlic model beating Google’s Gemini 3 and Anthropic Claude Opus 4.5 on coding and reasoning, and it may launch as GPT-5.2 or 5.5 in early 2026.

• OpenAI’s finances are under strain: massive data-center investments, constant fundraising, and projections that it may need around $200B in revenue by 2030 to turn a profit, all while traffic and daily active users have recently dipped.

• The company is shifting from purely generalist AI toward specialized, high-value domains (like biomedicine and healthcare), betting that superior reasoning and domain depth will matter more than raw user counts.

Why it matters: This moment is a stress test for the entire AI industry—if OpenAI can’t turn technical leadership and huge infrastructure bets into sticky, profitable products while strong rivals surge, it could redefine what “winning” in AI looks like: not just building the smartest model, but building the model that people actually rely on every day.

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One of Google’s biggest AI advantages is what it already knows about you

Key Takeaway: Google is betting big on ultra-personalized AI powered by everything it knows about you across Gmail, Search, Maps, Photos, and more — and that could be incredibly helpful or uncomfortably invasive, depending on how it’s handled.

More Insights:

• Google’s VP of Product for Search says one of its biggest AI opportunities is deeply personalizing answers for advice- and recommendation-style queries.

• Gemini is being woven into apps like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Gemini Deep Research, pulling in emails, documents, photos, location history, and browsing behavior.

• Personalization could mean AI that favors brands, products, and suggestions it has learned you like, instead of generic “best of” lists.

• The article raises consent and privacy concerns, comparing Google’s data-hungry AI to a sci-fi hivemind that “knows you” without your explicit approval.

• Google says users can control which apps feed Gemini under “Connected Apps” and promises to label personalized answers, but human reviewers may still see some of your data.

Why it matters: This is the front line of a new tradeoff: the more you let AI “inside” your life, the more useful it becomes — and the less clear it is where helpful personalization ends and quiet surveillance begins. Deciding where that line should be isn’t just a tech design question; it’s a societal one about how much of ourselves we’re willing to hand over in exchange for convenience.

Anthropic taps IPO lawyers as it races OpenAI to go public

Key Takeaway: Anthropic has hired IPO lawyers and is informally talking to banks as it gears up for a potential 2026 stock market debut, positioning itself to challenge OpenAI not just in AI models but on Wall Street.

More Insights:

• Anthropic picked Wilson Sonsini, a top Silicon Valley law firm behind IPOs like Google, LinkedIn, and Lyft, to lead its listing prep.

• The company is in talks for a private funding round that could value it at $300bn–$350bn, after a recent $15bn commitment from Microsoft and Nvidia.

• Investors hope Anthropic can go public before OpenAI, seizing the “first mover” advantage among frontier AI labs.

• Discussions with investment banks are still early and informal; no IPO underwriters have been chosen yet.

• Anthropic has been “operating like a public company,” hiring ex-Airbnb IPO veteran Krishna Rao as CFO and working through an internal IPO readiness checklist.

Why it matters: If Anthropic and OpenAI can sell public markets on sky-high valuations despite massive, unpredictable AI compute costs, it could lock in a new era where a handful of foundational model labs become the core infrastructure layer — and gatekeepers — of the digital economy.

Other stuff

• How I Reverse Engineered a Billion-Dollar Legal AI Tool and Found 100k+ Confidential Files

• Google Photos’ 2025 Recap turns to Gemini to find your highlights

• Andy Jassy says Amazon’s Nvidia competitor chip is already a multibillion-dollar business

• Google denies ‘misleading’ reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

• Are you balding? There’s an AI for that

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