OpenAI, NEO and the invisible war: Silicon Valley on the verge of vertigo

OpenAI wants to raise a trillion. NEO promises a humanoid butler at $500 per month. And Silicon Valley is discovering a new weapon: sex.

Three stories told by Carlos Diaz in Silicon Carne, which, put together, draw the same question: How far will tech go!

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OpenAI wants to raise 1 trillion

From idealism to market mechanics

“Silicon Valley is a machine for betraying its own ideals.” — Carlos Diaz, *Silicon Carne*

OpenAI has not changed in nature. She has confessed his nature.
Founded in 2015 to “save humanity”, the start-up has become a Public Benefit Corporation : a hybrid structure that authorizes profit in the name of a public good.

“OpenAI simply acted on what everyone knew: in the AI race, cash flow, not morality, sets the speed.” — Carlos Diaz

Large AI models cost more to train than a power plant to build.
GPUs are replacing refineries.
Result: OpenAI wants to raise up 1 trillion dollars to fund a new generation of computing, researchers and sectoral products.

Quantified goals:

• Current valuation: $500 billion
• Projected revenues 2025: $13 billion
• Ambition 2030: x15
• From Microsoft: 13 billion invested for 27% of exposure

OpenAI no longer sells software: it absorbs human functions.
Finance, health, legal, industry: each client company no longer pays for a product, but for rewrite your organization chart.

Microsoft: control without ownership

In the shadow of this expansion, another player is pulling the strings: microsoft.
Officially, it is only a strategic partner.
In reality, it orchestrates the entire pipeline: hosting (Azure), distribution (Copilot), integration (Office, Windows), and deployment of models via its cloud.

“Microsoft is the invisible infrastructure of AI. They don't have the brain, but everything that feeds it.” — Jérémie Michel

It's a masterstroke: Control without ownership.
Redmond captures flows without suffering risks.

And Sam Altman?
The CEO of OpenAI Does not own any shares (symbolic salary, zero equity) but a Power of orchestration colossal.
Its capital is network : investors, heads of state, engineers, strategists.

In the new Silicon Valley, power is no longer shareholder, but orchestral.

Understanding the “Public Benefit Corporation”

One PBC authorizes profits, but requires that they serve a public interest purpose.
For OpenAI, this means: “moving towards beneficial AI, while ensuring growth.”
In other words: an NGO with an Excel table.

Sovereignty according to OpenAI

The move to PBC also marks the birth of a new type of actor:
the state-owned company.
Its weapons: compute, models, human capital.
Its borders: bandwidth.

“General AI is not a technology, it is a foreign policy.” — Wallerand Moullé-Berteaux

The question is no longer “who will have the most efficient AI”, but “who will set the rules of the game.”
And in this race, the states already seem to be a step behind.

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2. NEO promises a humanoid butler at 500 dollars a month

The robot enters the house

While OpenAI is building brains, 1X Technologies Make bodies.
Their robot NEO, billed 499 dollars per month, promises to fold your clothes, tidy up your kitchen, and do the dishes.

But behind the techno dream lies a stranger truth:
in its initial version, the robot is remotely controlled by humans in virtual reality.

“Behind every robot, there is a human. Behind each gesture, a piece of data. Behind every piece of data is a smarter model.” — Anji Ismail

This is the fundamental compromise of modern robotics: no useful AI without real data.
And to learn, NEO must observe... your habits, your interiors, your gestures.

Tele-operation and the privacy gray zone

Imagine: while you are working, your robot does the cleaning.
But sometimes it is controlled by a stranger, elsewhere in the world, to help him learn.
The embedded camera is becoming an industrial eye.

“It's an Uber of manipulation: you pay for a robot, you receive a human remotely.” — Carlos Diaz

Each corrected gesture, each annotated error feeds the future model.
The home becomes a massive training laboratory.

La confidentiality is no longer an option, it is a technical parameter.
And engineers will soon have to design not “safe” robots, but robots socially acceptable.

NEO, the subscription robot

• Price: $499/month (or $20,000 upon purchase)
• Objective: 10,000 units delivered as early as 2026
• Technology: Learning through human tele-operation
• Ambition: 1 million units by 2028
• Investors: Tiger Global, OpenAI Startup Fund

From hand to data

Why the humanoid?
Because our world is designed for Human hand : handles, drawers, knobs, stairs.
To solve the hand is to solve the world.

But until it is “under control”, humans are needed in the loop.
This, paradoxically, will accelerate its autonomy.

“The more humans there are behind the robots, the more robots learn to do without them.” — Carlos Diaz

The dilemma is posed: more comfort, less privacy.
And Europe, true to itself, will regulate while the Americans deploy.

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Sex Warfare in Silicon Valley

Spies, LinkedIn and trade secrets

The third story told by Carlos Diaz is worthy of a spy novel.
Except it's true.

According to the Times of London, Chinese and Russian spies are targeting American engineers and tech executives.
Their weapon: LinkedIn.
Their strategy: seduction, marriage, children... then extraction of information.

“Security is no longer a question of firewalls, but of libido.” — Carlos Diaz

The estimated losses amount to 600 billion dollars a year.
Industrial leaks, hostile takeovers, military secrets.
A silent war, without missiles, fought with Connect and private messages.

Engineers, a new intelligence target

Agencies are now talking about War of Hearts and Minds 2.0 :
the exploitation of emotional and social faults.
The engineer is no longer just an employee: he is a human endpoint.

“You can shield a system, but not a conversation.” — Wallerand Moullé-Berteaux

This intimate war blurs the lines between national security, economic espionage, and privacy.
And for a Silicon Valley obsessed with transparency and trust, it's a paradox: The more she connects, the more she is exposed.

$600 billion stolen

Each year, the United States estimates that 600 billion the cost of intellectual property leaks.
Some of these losses would be linked to manipulations targeting individuals rather than infrastructures.

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Conclusion, discernment as the last firewall

OpenAI makes brains.
1X Technologies Make the bodies.
LinkedIn provides the front doors.

The rest?
Our discernment.

Silicon Valley has crossed a threshold: where technology is no longer content with augmenting humans, it is beginning to replace him, observe him and seduce him.

“Protect your software, but also your underwear.” — Carlos Diaz, closing remarks

Ironic, but fair.
Because as machines become more intelligent, Humanity will have to learn vigilance again, that analog quality that nothing can automate.

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