OpenAI Grove
68 comments
·September 12, 2025Zagreus2142
r0m4n0
I think it’s more like Open AI has the name to throw around and a lot of credibility but not products that are profitable. They are burning cash and need to show a curve that they can reach profitability. Getting 15 people with 15 ideas they can throw their weight behind is worth a lot
AnEro
I think that MIT study of 95% of internal AI projects failing has scared off a lot of corporations from risking time in it. I think they also see they are hitting a limit of profitable intelligence from their services. (with the growth in inelegance the past 6–8 months being more realistic, not the unbelievable like in the past few years)
I think everyone is starting to see this as a middle man problem to solve, look at ERP systems for instance when they popped up it had some growing pains as an industry. (or even early windows/microsoft 'developers, developers, developers' target audience)
I OpenAI see it will take a lot of third party devs to take what OpenAI has and run with it. So they want to build a good developer and start up network to make sure that there are a good, solid ecosystem of options corporations and people can use AI wise.
Workaccount2
The MIT study found 90% of workers were regularly using LLMs.
The gap was that workers were using their own implementation instead of the company's implementation.
keeda
The MIT study as released also does not really provide any support for the 95% failure rate claim. Until we have more details, we really don't know where that number came from:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7365026...
AnEro
Yea from what I understand 'Chats' and AI coding are something they already have market domination/are a leader on and are a good/okay product. It's the other use cases they haven't delievered on in terms of other companies using them as a platform to deliver AI apps, which I would imagine would have been a huge vertical in their pitches to investors and internal plans.
These third-party apps get huge token usage with agenentic patterns. So losing out on them and being forced to make more internal products to tune to specific use cases is not something they want to biuld out or explore
tern
It's possible that a single senior employee just wanted to do this and it doesn't cost that much and their manager was like "sure"
albingroen
I really do want this to be the case
rich_sasha
Without putting my weight behind them, here's some counterarguments:
- OpenAI needs talent, and it's generally hard to find. Money will buy you smart PhDs who want to be on the conveyer belt, but not people who want to be a centre of a project of their own. This at least puts them in the orbit of OpenAI - some will fly away, some will set up something to be aquihired, some will just give up and try to join OpenAI anyway
- the amount of cash they will put into this is likely minuscule compared to their mammoth raises. It doesn't fundamentally change their funding needs
- OpenAI's biggest danger is that someone out there finds a better way to do AI. Right now they have a moat made of cash - to replicate them, you generally need a lot of hardware and cash for the electricity bill. Remember the blind panic when DeepSeek came out? So, anything they can do to stop that sprouting elsewhere is worth the money. Sprouting within OpenAI would be a nice-to-have.
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ozgung
I don't think it's about money, they don't invest anything. They gather data about "technical talent" working on AI related ideas. They will connect with 15 of these people to see if they can build it together.
LordDragonfang
It seems almost like... an internship program for would-be AI founders?
My guess is this is as much about talent acquisition as it is about talent retention. Give the bored, overpaid top talent outside problems to mentor for/collaborate on that will still have strong ties to OpenAI, so they don't have the urge to just quit and start such companies on their own.
ks2048
> OpenAI has more money than it can invest productively
I don't think there is any money given, except travel costs for first and last week.
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andsoitis
OpenAI appears to lack clear product vision.
This feels like a program to see what sticks.
arcticfox
"Pre-idea stage" support is wild to me
reaperducer
This feels like a program to see what sticks.
Isn't that how we got (and eventually lost) most Google products?
andsoitis
There’s a difference between having product ideas rooted in compelling hypotheses on the one hand, and random ideas you throw against a wall and see what sticks.
I suspect, but could be wrong, that in OpenAI’s case it is because they believed they will reach AGI imminently and then “all problems are solved”, in other words the ultimate product. However, since that isn’t going to happen, they now have to think of more concrete products that are hard to copy and that people are willing to pay for.
minimaxir
Sam clearly misses Y Combinator.
Insanity
Yeah, my thoughts where along the same line. Seems like they want to be another Ycombinator but more focused on AI. (Although TBF, I guess AI would also get the most traction at Ycombinator these days, given the hype wave).
bananapub
Did we ever find out why it is he doesn’t work there anymore?
reducesuffering
Was forced to choose between OpenAI and YC by Paul Graham and Jessica. Sama chose OpenAI.
system2
Clearly, dealing with OpenAI doesn't leave any room for fun stuff like YC. Just a hunch.
moralestapia
Indeed.
Exactly what I read between the lines on this.
jgalt212
"pre-idea individuals"
Next up, we're funding prenatal individuals.
hansmayer
Right, this corporate linkedin-lingo is getting worse by the day.
TZubiri
"it offers pre-idea individuals" wtf
If ideas are a dime a dozen, what even is a pre-idea startup
fi-le
Did anyone get confirmation that the form got sent? There is no feedback from pressing "submit" for me.
jtfrench
Same
thornewolf
Same issue
vasilzhigilei
It looks like application submission isn't functioning.
dvfjsdhgfv
I first misread it as "OpenAI Grave" where someone would put the list of all discontinued models.
nickphx
Why not ask the big bag of words to generate "ideas"?
bilbo0s
Just, Devil's Advocate..
but what, exactly, makes you believe this internship program is not an idea generated by the big bag of words?
yde_java
The FAQ items don't expand for me, on Android Vivaldi.
Cheer2171
> "pre-idea individuals"
jsheard
Move over "idea guys", it's the era of the "guy who hypothetically might have an idea at some point".
arcticfox
I've got concepts of an idea
bilbo0s
I don't know man?
To me, it sounded like, "let's find all the idea guys who can't afford a tech founder. Then we'll see which ones have the best ideas, and move forward with those. As a bonus, we'll know exactly where we'd be able to acquihire a product manager for it!"
babyshake
If OpenAI needs a bunch of PMs, they will increasingly be able to spin some up, not hire humans.
MPSimmons
I caught that too. What's a "pre-idea" individual? Someone who... wants the vague _idea_ of a company?
spiderice
No, before that
fkyoureadthedoc
It's the AI guy version of the blockchain guy who had no idea what it was for or what to do with it, but was very hyped on it
babelfish
South Park Commons -1 to 0 program seems conceptually similar
tibbon
I mean, I get it.
I'm highly capable of building some great things, but at my dayjob I'm filled to brim with things to do and a non-ending list of tasks in front of me.
I've built cool stuff before, and if given a little push and some support could probably come up with something useful - and I can implement much of it myself.
Put me in the room with cool people, throw out some conversation starters, shake it up and I'll come up with something.
koakuma-chan
Do you have to be in the US or can they help to get in?
jtfrench
The country selection menu seems to include countries from around the world. It sounds like only the first and last weeks are actually on-site, the rest in async/remote.
Can someone give the counter argument to my initial cynical read of this? That read being: OpenAI has more money than it can invest productively within it's own company and is trying to cast a net to find new product ideas via an incubator? I can't imagine Softbank or Microsoft is happy about their money being funneled into something like this and it implies they have run out of ideas internally. But I think I'm probably being too reflexively cynical