Brian Dirking

OpenAI just created a $10 billion company whose ONLY job is forcing businesses to use AI. And they're literally guaranteeing investors a 17.5% annual return to make it happen. It's called "The Deployment Company." OpenAI finalized it yesterday with 19 investors including TPG, SoftBank, Bain Capital, Brookfield, and Advent International. Here's the structure: OpenAI puts in $1.5 billion. The private equity firms put in $4 billion. In exchange, those PE firms open up their 2,000+ portfolio companies as a CAPTIVE customer base for OpenAI's products. OpenAI then embeds teams of engineers directly inside those companies, Palantir-style, to integrate their tools into daily operations. And here's the big red flag in all of this: OpenAI is GUARANTEEING those PE firms a 17.5% annual return over five years. That means even if the companies in the portfolio don't want AI, don't need AI, or get zero value from AI, OpenAI is still on the hook to pay those returns. Think about what that means for a second. OpenAI is so desperate for enterprise adoption that they're paying Wall Street to force their product into thousands of businesses. They've essentially turned private equity firms into a distribution cartel with a guaranteed commission. This has NEVER been done before in enterprise software. No software company in history has guaranteed above-market returns to financial sponsors just to get their product installed. And it gets crazier: Within MINUTES of OpenAI's announcement, Anthropic announced their own version. A $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman. Same playbook. Two companies worth a combined $1+ TRILLION in private valuation both concluded on the same day that organic demand for their products is not growing fast enough. If enterprises were lining up to buy AI on their own, you wouldn't need to bribe private equity firms with guaranteed returns to shove it into their portfolios. You would just sell it normally like every other software company in history. But they can't. Because the gap between what AI companies PROMISE and what enterprises actually experience is still enormous. OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap just moved into a new role specifically to lead this push. They've also signed "Frontier Alliances" with major consulting firms to embed AI through professional services channels. Every move they're making screams the same thing: We have a demand problem. And this is all happening right before OpenAI tries to IPO at $850 billion. If they can show Wall Street that 2,000+ companies are "using OpenAI products" through this PE distribution channel, it inflates their enterprise metrics right before the roadshow. Doesn't matter if those companies actually need it or if it creates real value. What matters is the number on the S-1. This is the AI playbook entering its most dangerous phase. The tech is real but the business model is being held together by financial engineering, guaranteed returns, and captive distribution deals that look more like a pharmaceutical company paying doctors to prescribe their drug than a software company earning customers on merit. And both OpenAI and Anthropic admitted it on the same day.

Warren Buffett just warned that the US dollar could collapse and admitted he doesn't understand most of the stock market anymore. 95 years old, sitting on $380 billion in cash, and the first time watching from the sidelines instead of actively investing. And what he revealed at this weekend's Berkshire shareholder meeting is genuinely concerning: On the market, Buffett didn't hold back. He compared it to "a church with a casino attached" and said the casino has never been more packed. On one-day options: "That is not investing. It's not speculating. It's gambling. Totally." He pointed to the Avis short squeeze THIS WEEK. A rental car company that's been around for 50 years getting meme-squeezed in 2026. The same behavior that blew up retail traders with GameStop is back, except now it's hitting boring legacy companies with zero business being volatile. "We have lots more regulation now, but people spend their time figuring out how to get around the rules rather than follow the rules." That one sentence explains more about the current market than every CNBC segment combined. When asked why he's hoarding $380 billion instead of investing it, Buffett said something no one expected: "I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I have not learned new industries for some years. I'm not going to have an edge on a whole bunch of younger people that have actually grown up with it." Think about what he's actually saying... This is a man who made $140 billion by understanding businesses better than anyone alive. And he's telling you the current market is so detached from reality that even HE can't make sense of what's being valued and why. He quoted IBM's Tom Watson Sr.: "I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots." In 60 years of managing money, he said MAYBE five were "really juicy." Five out of sixty. That means 92% of his career was spent WAITING while everyone else gambled. And he still ended up richer than all of them. Then the conversation turned to inflation and that's where it gets really interesting: Buffett said America is "not immune" from runaway inflation. He brought up countries that went bankrupt "six or seven times" in his lifetime. Compared today to right before Volcker had to rescue the dollar, when Americans were borrowing at 12% to buy farmland earning 6% because they believed the dollar would disappear. "Cash is trash" was the mentality. Nebraska farmers collapsed because of it. Entire communities wiped out not by a recession but by a BELIEF that the currency was dying. And Buffett sees that same energy building again. Then someone asked the question everyone wanted answered: Do you see a crash coming? "If you saw it coming, it wouldn't happen. The things people are talking about and thinking about? It's not going to happen. But there are things that can come out of the blue." He compared it to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 that triggered World War I. Nobody was discussing or anticipating it. But it changed the world overnight. "That's particularly true now because of the things that can come out of the sky." A 95yo man who has survived every crash, every war, every crisis of the last six decades just told you the market is a casino, the dollar isn't safe, and the real collapse will be something nobody sees coming. $380 billion in cash is his answer because he believes things are about to get much worse.