By Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Publication Date: 2026-01-05 11:00:00
Pity the paradox of the content producer in the age of AI. On the one hand, AI is one of the greatest gifts of all time in terms of the topics it covers. The strategy year 2025 in review, just like 2024 and 2023 (plus a few crackers in 2022), was completely dominated by AI; My Sharp Tech co-host, Andrew Sharp, wrote “The Definitive Ranking of Tech Company Takeability,” and OpenAI was number one by a bullet:
OpenAI may or may not be the most important company of the future. However, there is no doubt that we are witnessing one of the most fruitful ventures in the history of the world. From the day it was founded — with a nonprofit corporate structure designed to build and then self-govern AGI “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity” — this company has divided audiences, demanding either passionate support or aggressive eye-rolling.
On the other hand, LLMs in particular are content producers in the truest sense of the word! What’s the point…
