Mark Cuban: OpenAI Will Never Return The $1 Trillion It's Investing

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2026-05-03

YouTube video id: oEVHNvE_jDw

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEVHNvE_jDw

I'd love to hear your perspective, not
on the spend, but on the return needed
to make those numbers work.
>> They'll never get it.
>> Yeah, they're they're they're just
away that money.
I mean, at scale, right? It's not that
AI is not going to work, but look at
Apple, right? They haven't spent next to
anything, but they've got a foundation
where they can just plug and play into
their devices. But there's a lot of FUD
being put out about the spending, right?
we're going to spend a trillion dollars
cuz we need all this data center
capacity. Well, the data center the the
ability to process is going to get
faster cheaper, right? And it's going to
happen faster and quicker than people
expect. And so I think a lot of the
numbers that they're throwing out there
um aren't going to come to fruition, you
know, which is why I say they're full of
It's not going to happen. But
those who have just gone allin, some of
them are spending more cash than they
have available. And I I understand why.
I just don't I'm not convinced that for
all of them it's going to work. And the
reason why is we don't know if the the
business of foundational models, the
chat GPTs, Geminis, um Grock, um Clyde,
etc. is going to be like the streaming
industry where there's one leader and a
bunch of players that make money um or
some that make money at least or search
where there's effectively one company.
And so they need to raise all the money,
go all in and spend everything they can,
kiss all the rings they need to kiss
around the world in hopes of being the
one, right? It sounds like um Morpheus.
I'm just waiting for Keo Reeves to walk
through the door.
But so it's it's going to be very
difficult, but I don't think it's going
to pay off the way they expect.
>> They're away the money at
scale.
>> It's hard to do, right? But
but if you don't go all in like that,
you can't keep on raising money because
as it zigs and zags and you don't know
where it's all going to go, if you're
not still raising money, you're in
deeper trouble because you don't know if
you know if you're not the winner, then
you've got problems.
Let me make their case for the sake of
argument. Um, right now what we're
seeing is a moment in the AI world where
the training has gotten to the point
where it's less general. You focus on
certain capabilities. We know anthropic
has focused on code. Open AAI has
focused on healthcare and it's difficult
to train up really well in those
disciplines. And you see things like
anthropic leading in code for a while
because they've gotten good at it. So
that to me would suggest that there's
going to be multiple winners here
>> potentially. But in a vertical right
like healthcare, you've got open
evidence and open evidence is actually
going out and buying intellectual
property.
Um chat GPT is not. And what you'll
you're starting to see happen and will
happen even more. If you own
intellectual property, you're going to
see fewer people applying for patents
because the minute you apply for the
patent, it's available to everybody.
which means every model can train on it.
And when I go and talk via cost plus
drugs, when I go talk to hospitals and
research um um campuses and um schools,
I tell them do not publish
sell because the minute you publish,
even though it makes you feel better and
you seem like you're, you know, a bigger
dog in the community, um all of a sudden
every model has been trained on it and
you've given away your advantage. And so
when it comes to verticals, I don't know
necessarily that they're going to be
able to buy the IP they need going
forward. Now what um Claude is doing
with anthropic and focusing on
programming that's not really a vertical
per se, right? Because it can be used
for everything. It's it's really process
driven and I think that's smart. Um but
when I look at the other ones,
you know, Gemini has an advantage
because Google search is Gemini, right?
And so now when you do a search, it
comes back with an AI response and it
can sell ads around it. I don't know
what Meta is going to do. I don't know
what um Open AI is going to do when it's
all said and done because I don't think
you know you can I always call like
healthc care for open AI is a feature.
It's not a product and it's a feature
that you know open evidence has that
others can add just by going spending
money on the IP. And then you've got the
bigger problem like when you think about
all these foundational models today and
for the next few years, they are built
on text and pictures, not really video.
They don't know what's happening in the
real world. You know, like I mentioned
the the example about the 2-year-old
pushing the sippy cup off the high
chair. Like it doesn't understand that.
you know, it's not if if you fed it all
kinds of information, it's not going to
be able to come up with E equals MC^2.
And to do that, you have to understand
physics. You have to understand the
world. And so, we're going from large
language models, I think, to what's
called a worldview approach where it's
built on, you know, understanding the
physics of the world and being able to
take video and understand it. I invested
in one company that's putting up
satellites that can look at different
materials and tell you what the makeup
of those, you know, um, natural
materials are. Is it wood? Is it rock?
Whatever is in there, like a
spectrograph. And I think that's going
to supersede a lot of what Claude and
Grock, etc. are doing. And so, we
haven't seen the best of AI in my
opinion. Um, and it's going to just get
crazier and crazier and crazier. And so
when you think about all these people
spending all this money, look, if you're
the best programming, you know, like
Claude is, and that's your niche, great.
But I don't know what the niche of these
other ones are. Do you?
>> No. But I I don't think there's going to
I mean, if you have three, four winners,
maybe that works. Maybe three. Any more
than that, it's going to be difficult.
>> I mean, it's like then you're then
you're just a website.
>> Yep.
>> You know, you're just an app. and you
just spent a trillion dollars to be an
app.
It's a lot of money.
Let Let me ask
Let me ask you this. You're someone who
gained national notoriety
by being, you know, somewhat brash and
rebelling against the establishment.
that. No way.
Uh, do you see some of yourself in the
Sam Alman's and Dario ammo days in the
world?
>> Maybe a little bit in Dario, but not in
Sam. Um,
say more.
>> I mean, you know, Dario now is trying to
scare the out of everybody, right?
But that's part of raising money. Like
when we had Broadcast.com back in the
day, I would say, "We're just going to
replace cable and satellite and all
that." And it didn't, you know, but I
kept on saying, "It's going to be in a
couple years." And here we are 30 years
later and we've kind of gotten there.
And so I think Dario is pushing forward
with Claude and I think to your point
their niche with programming and agents
I think is going to hold for them. Um
and I think they're they understand they
may have to move to a worldview
environment as well. Sam is all over the
map and I think that'll backfire on him.
Um, I just think, you know, they were
they were buying up 40% of this
company's memory chips, right? And they
just backed out of that. You can't do
that. You know, at some point people
stopped trusting and stopped wanting to
do business. You know, they just moved
him to from their safety committee, I
think, to something else. I forget all
the details. I think, you know, Sam's
accomplished a a bunch of amazing
things, but I just I just don't see how
either one of them communicating is
beneficial for anything but raising
money.
>> So, what would your advice to them be?
>> Um, they're doing they don't need my
advice at all, right? Um,
you know, you just it's so early. It's
just changing so fast. you you know
you've just got to stay connected to as
many people as possible.