Karen Hao on the making of a $90B AI empire

Equity

TechCrunch

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Karen Hao, the bestselling author of "Empire of AI," has watched OpenAI go from a nonprofit “laughingstock” into a $90 billion powerhouse chasing artificial general intelligence at breakneck speeds. Hao, who first profiled the company back in 2020, says early visions of building AI “for humanity’s benefit” were quickly overtaken by a familiar Silicon Valley mindset: Move fast, break things, and let scale be the measure of success. This week, Hao joined TechCrunch’s Equity podcast to unpack the direction the AI boom is going and who’s paying the price. Hao argues that, like historical empires, today’s AI giants rely on resource-hoarding and exploitative labor to amass political and economic power, and they’re doing so at the expense of the environment. For investors and founders, it’s a clear signal that AI’s current path carries real risks, and that there’s room to build a better model. Listen to the full episode to hear: How OpenAI's three internal "clans" warred to shape the company's trajectory The hidden human costs of data labeling in developing countries How the "China competition" narrative serves Silicon Valley's interests Where founders might find different opportunities beyond the pursuit of AGI Equity will be back Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned. Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a paid ad by Fidelity Private Shares.
0:03.2	A messy or missing cap table might not just slow you down.
0:05.8	It could cost you your next fundraising round.
0:19.7	Hello and welcome back to Equity TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:24.4	I'm Rebecca Boulon, and this is the episode where we bring on an industry expert to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep.
0:31.2	Today, we're joined by Karen Howe, best-selling author and award-winning AI reporter whose new book, Empire of AI, Dreams and Nightmares, and Sam Altman's Open AI was released earlier this year.
0:41.0	Karen, I'm so excited to talk to you. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Rebecca.
0:44.9	I feel like your book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in generative AI or just AI in general.
0:54.5	Before I even start asking questions, congratulations for being on Times' AI 100 list.
1:00.0	I saw that today.
1:01.0	Thank you.
1:01.8	That's pretty cool.
1:03.0	So how are you feeling about everything?
1:05.0	This was published in May, right?
1:06.4	So, like, how's the reception been?
1:08.4	I mean, the reception has been everything that I had hoped and dreamed of.
1:12.6	Writing a book is really weird because it's so different from working in a newsroom and actually having
1:17.6	colleagues. Like, it's such a solo endeavor. And you end up sitting with your ideas and you're
1:22.9	reporting for so long just by yourself with no one to talk to about it that I really wondered, does this make
1:29.4	sense to anyone? Like, is it just in my head or is it going to resonate, especially like the
1:34.8	themes and the argument that I make? And I genuinely was concerned that would only make sense to me
1:40.6	and no one would read the book. And I've been really just so grateful that it has
	...

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