My guest today is Hayden Field, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies in particular tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026.

You’ve certainly heard a version of the monetization cliff story before. The biggest AI firms are built off the back of hundreds of billions in capital investment, and they’re linked to even greater amounts of forward-looking investment in data center build-out, chips, and other infrastructure spend. At some point, the profits have to materialize, or the bubble pops. Maybe AGI arrives, maybe the economy crashes, who knows.

You’ve heard me ask some version of this question to scores of CEOs here on this show, and a majority of them have hinted toward the bubble popping — they think some companies will fail in spectacular fashion, some will succeed, and the opportunities, especially the money, are simply too big to ignore. We’re doing this, whether we want to or not — the market depends on it.

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