This Ashlee Vance interview of Pedro Franceschi from Brex contains so many interesting stories it might cause you to reconsider what it means to be a CEO.

Every few years a startup comes along that dominates the headlines and grabs all the attention. For all the right and wrong reasons. I have been following the industry long enough to see that pattern repeat itself. Netscape, Amazon, Facebook, and more recently, OpenAI.

The headlines are driven by the curiosity of the masses. And then curiosity of the masses drives the headlines. This is an endless loop, till we move on to something new. A lot of you might have forgotten that Facebook’s every move was dissected in the press. It even merited two dedicated blogs, AllFacebook and Inside Facebook. And that’s not to mention other consumer-focused technology blogs.

OpenAI is part of the larger curiosity, and fear about AI, which is dominating the global attention sphere. It is dominating the investments, it is dominating the policies, and it is dominating the social dynamics. OpenAI, to put it bluntly, is the most visible manifestation of the AI revolution. Just as Facebook became the face of social media. Remember my essay, Neo Symbolic Capitalism.

This past week was a perfect example of OpenAI sucking all the attention. So much so, it put the much more relevant and bigger story, of Claude Code being leaked into the shadows. There were the persistent rumors of their public offering (and I wrote about them.) There was an out-of-the-blue acquisition of TBPN. And more recently, the news that there was a shake up in the executive ranks. And the news that their CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo is taking a medical leave.

I try my best not to get too distracted by the bits and bobs, but there is a tidbit you might enjoy.

Looks like OpenAI will drop a new model next week, code-named Spud, that is going to be a big leap forward for them. This is a broadside against Anthropic. And it is so compute intensive that OpenAI will need to focus its resources. That is the primary reason it has decided to put the kibosh on Sora, though that’s not how the headlines framed it. Anyway. Let’s see how this new model pans out.

Here are seven stories I recommend.

• 30 Years of Nature Biotechnology. The cost of sequencing a human genome fell faster than the cost of computing itself. Then the exponential curve broke, because reading genomes turned out to be the easy part. Interpretation is where the noise lives. AI has emerged as an answer, helping make clearer predictions. [Nature Biotechnology]
• Inside Nepal’s Fake Rescue Racket. The Kathmandu Post investigates one of the most sophisticated insurance fraud networks in the world. Trekking guides in the Himalayas terrify tourists into believing they’re dying of altitude sickness, call in helicopters, check them into hospitals, and file insurance claims that bear no resemblance to what happened. [Kathmandu Post]
• Sora: A Solution Without a Problem. Sora went from number one on the App Store to discontinued in six months. The problem was never technical. It was creative. [Kaptur]
• Whatever Happens to Music Will Happen to AI. Bruce Sterling, who is two years older than artificial intelligence itself, compares AI to the great musical disruptions: the birth of opera, jazz, rock and roll. His argument is that AI is a fad, but not merely a fad. You can’t wait for it to blow over. A lot of it will blow over, but a lot of things will be blown flat by it. [Medium]
• Shakesville’s Unravelling and the Not-So-Golden Age of Blogging. Joanna Mang at The Outline tells the story of Shakesville, a progressive blog that started in 2004 and collapsed into something between a community and a cult. It was good to revisit this piece from 2019. It feels so prophetic about the awfulness of the current internet. [The Outline]
• Apple’s 50th Anniversary: Tim Cook on Why He Still Chases Crazy Ideas. Ryan D’Agostino’s Esquire profile of Tim Cook is one of the best Cook interviews in years. “It’s definitely still his company,” Cook says. The piece also covers the tariff calculus, the $600 billion U.S. manufacturing commitment, and Cook’s insistence that engagement with every administration is the only path forward. [Esquire]
• Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Hanif Abdurraqib writes about Jay-Z’s 1996 debut for GQ, and it’s not really about the music. Thirty years later a grown up billionaire shares his story. I am no fan of Jay-Z, but this was a great read. [GQ]

From CrazyStupidTech:

• Remembering the iPhone — Fred Vogelstein revisits the astonishingly analog development of the iPhone on Apple’s 50th birthday. Could AI have built it? Not a chance.

What I wrote this week, ICYMI:

• Why OpenAI Bought TBPN — To understand OpenAI’s decision to buy an upstart media company we have to go back more than a century.
• OpenAI: The Fix Is In — How OpenAI is engineering its IPO narrative through circular financing and retail ETFs.
• Minimal and Abstract Pen Photography — It is not the object, but what it represents. Some reflections on my recent experiments with photography.

April 5, 2026. San Francisco

“Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he’d be the king.” — @paulg

Anytime anyone underestimates or tries to do an end run around @sama, I remind myself of this golden nugget from PG, the man who knew him best before he became Sam the man. Just a reminder for present and future @OpenAI employees and investors. (My Tweet)

Over the past week or so I noticed that CFO Sarah Friar and AGI chief Fidji Simo were doing the press. Why them and not Sam? We know Sam loves being in the spotlight. Was there some kind of palace coup in the works?

Well, there might have been something to my late night ruminations. The Information reports that Altman has excluded Friar from key financial meetings. She has been reporting to Simo, not him, since August 2025. Ironic, considering OpenAI plans to go public soon and the CFO is a key player. Simo is now taking medical leave to treat an ongoing neuroimmune condition.

PG quote looms large!

April 5, 2026. San Francisco