OpenAI o3 and o4-mini

So at this point OpenAI has 6 reasoning models, 4 flagship chat models, and 7 cost optimized models. So that's 17 models in total and that's not even counting their older models and more specialized ones. Compare this with Anthropic that has 7 models in total and 2 main ones that they promote.

This is just getting to be a bit much, seems like they are trying to cover for the fact that they haven't actually done much. All these models feel like they took the exact same base model, tweaked a few things and released it as an entirely new model rather than updating the existing ones. In fact based on some of the other comments here it sounds like these are just updates to their existing model, but they release them as new models to create more media buzz.

"haven't actually done much" being popularizing the chat llm and absolutely dwarfing the competition in paid usage

ChatGPT was released in 2022, so OP's point stands perfectly well.

They're rumored to be working on a social network to rival X with the focus being on image generations.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/15/openai-is-reportedly-devel...

The play now seems to be less AGI, more "too big to fail" / use all the capital to morph into a FAANG bigtech.

My bet is that they'll develop a suite of office tools that leverage their model, chat/communication tools, a browser, and perhaps a device.

They're going to try to turn into Google (with maybe a bit of Apple and Meta) before Google turns into them.

Near-term, I don't see late stage investors as recouping their investment. But in time, this may work out well for them. There's a tremendous amount of inefficiency and lack of competition amongst the big tech players. They've been so large that nobody else could effectively challenge them. Now there's a "startup" with enough capital to start eating into big tech's more profitable business lines.