{
  "generatedAt": "2026-10-22T01:47:05Z",
  "disclaimer": "Analysis and opinion, not investment advice.",
  "kind": "person",
  "slug": "michael-spencer",
  "name": "Michael Spencer",
  "role": null,
  "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/people/michael-spencer/",
  "api": "https://deepstack.ltd/api/v1/entities/people/michael-spencer.json",
  "summary": "Michael Spencer is named in 7 Parts of The Buildout, most recently Part 16: The Seller Holds the Paper. Argued in Part 5 (Anthropic: not yet), Part 5 (OpenAI: commoditized), Part 5 (Voices that cross sides), Part 9 (Still a demo), Part 9 (The owner of the agent), Part 10 (Not the customers, yet), Part 12 (Open weights set the price), Part 14 (The bill has moved to debt), Part 16 (Voices that cross sides).",
  "parts": [
    {
      "part": 5,
      "headline": "OpenAI and Anthropic Are Not the Same Business",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 6,
      "headline": "Power Doesn’t Depreciate. Its Premium Moves.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/power-doesnt-depreciate/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "headline": "Habit Was the Moat. Agents Are Draining It.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 10,
      "headline": "The Bubble Is in the Denominator",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/"
    },
    {
      "part": 12,
      "headline": "The Model Is Not the Price",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-model-is-not-the-price/"
    },
    {
      "part": 14,
      "headline": "The Cash Arrives Unevenly",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-cash-arrives-unevenly/"
    },
    {
      "part": 16,
      "headline": "The Seller Holds the Paper",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-seller-holds-the-paper/"
    }
  ],
  "numbers": [],
  "mentions": [
    {
      "part": 5,
      "section": "Lede",
      "excerpt": "The slow laboratory went from $5.7bn to $6.7bn, according to Michael Spencer; Anthropic reached $11.6bn.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "section": "The pair breaks",
      "excerpt": "Michael Spencer reports an 80 percent cut to GPT-5.6 Lune, with routing layers and code wrappers steering work toward cheaper Chinese models.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 6,
      "section": "Politics sets the price",
      "excerpt": "Michael Spencer relays polling that puts opposition to large data centers near people’s homes at 70% to 75%, with more than half of Americans supporting a national moratorium.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/power-doesnt-depreciate/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "section": "The first bill",
      "excerpt": "Michael Spencer, who covers the AI industry daily, expects about 1 million users by November, doubts the ratio of downloads to users and warns that Muse’s compute bill could crater Meta’s free cash flow in 2027.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 10,
      "section": "Who writes the checks",
      "excerpt": "Michael Spencer adds a price warning: Ramp’s index showed what customers pay per million tokens down 41% from its March peak, to $0.68.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/"
    },
    {
      "part": 12,
      "section": "Lede",
      "excerpt": "On October 1, Michael Spencer counted Chinese models at 57% to 67% of token usage on the OpenRouter platform by September.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-model-is-not-the-price/"
    },
    {
      "part": 14,
      "section": "The buyers have not paid yet",
      "excerpt": "Tae Kim relayed on October 2 that Axios and the Financial Times put OpenAI's annual recurring revenue near $70 billion; Michael Spencer of AI Supremacy wrote on October 9 that a later Financial Times report found about $50 billion.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-cash-arrives-unevenly/"
    },
    {
      "part": 16,
      "section": "Two labs carry the chain",
      "excerpt": "Michael Spencer of AI Supremacy makes the defense.",
      "url": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-seller-holds-the-paper/"
    }
  ],
  "sides": [
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "openai-commoditized",
      "sideLabel": "OpenAI: commoditized",
      "claim": "Michael Spencer predicts Anthropic will achieve AI supremacy status in 2027 and by 2030 will have no comparable peer competitor, not Google, OpenAI, DeepSeek, or Alibaba.",
      "date": "2026-08-20",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/we-have-never-seen-an-anthropic-before-2026-revenue-ipo",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "openai-commoditized",
      "sideLabel": "OpenAI: commoditized",
      "claim": "Open-source Chinese models are disrupting OpenAI's revenue because routing and code wrappers increasingly favor them over OpenAI's models due to cheaper token costs, forcing OpenAI to cut API prices, including an 80% cut to GPT-5.6 Lune, which…",
      "date": "2026-08-20",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/we-have-never-seen-an-anthropic-before-2026-revenue-ipo",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "anthropic-not-yet",
      "sideLabel": "Anthropic: not yet",
      "claim": "Anthropic's ARR grew from approximately $700 million in August 2024 to its current level, a roughly 93x increase in about two years.",
      "date": "2026-08-20",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/we-have-never-seen-an-anthropic-before-2026-revenue-ipo",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "anthropic-not-yet",
      "sideLabel": "Anthropic: not yet",
      "claim": "Cognition's Devin achieved a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate and a $40 billion valuation in under two years, making it exceptional among AI startups for this pace of revenue growth.",
      "date": "2026-08-20",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/visions-of-ai-automating-repetitive-grunt-coding-tasks-2026-devin",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "crossing",
      "sideLabel": "Voices that cross sides",
      "claim": "As Devin and similar tools scale, they drive increased token usage of Anthropic's models, creating a compounding benefit to Anthropic.",
      "date": "2026-08-20",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/visions-of-ai-automating-repetitive-grunt-coding-tasks-2026-devin",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 5,
      "question": null,
      "side": "crossing",
      "sideLabel": "Voices that cross sides",
      "claim": "Europe's dream of sovereign AI leadership is fading because Mistral, despite raising 3.5 billion dollars at a 21 billion euro valuation, has been unable to compete with the United States or China in open-source AI models.",
      "date": "2026-09-10",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-reality-european-sovereign-ai-is-dying-mistral-series-d",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/anthropic-grew-142-percent-openai/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "question": null,
      "side": "still-a-demo",
      "sideLabel": "Still a demo",
      "claim": "Michael Spencer is not confident about Muse's odds of success, citing that only Anthropic has shown how to scale ARR so far in this Generative AI cycle, that the ratio of app downloads to actual users seems fairly low and suspicious, and that Meta…",
      "date": "2026-09-29",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/the-era-of-personal-super-intelligent-agents-muse-2026",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "question": null,
      "side": "still-a-demo",
      "sideLabel": "Still a demo",
      "claim": "Generative AI's impact on the macro economy and labor market is a serious concern: higher inflation, less hiring, more anxiety, and a lack of ROI compared to the debt, capex and resulting AI bubble, with higher earnings masking dangerous…",
      "date": "2026-09-08",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/gpt-6-astra-hugging-face-incident-2026-review",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "question": "who-collects",
      "side": "owner-of-the-agent",
      "sideLabel": "The owner of the agent",
      "claim": "Since Meta Muse optimizes how consumers clean up digital subscriptions they no longer care about, at scale it could implode subscriptions and accelerate subscription fatigue further in 2027, significantly hurting independent media providers such as…",
      "date": "2026-09-29",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/the-era-of-personal-super-intelligent-agents-muse-2026",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 9,
      "question": "who-collects",
      "side": "owner-of-the-agent",
      "sideLabel": "The owner of the agent",
      "claim": "Michael Spencer is not sure a future AI monopoly warning about human-extinction risk will be well received given how unpopular AI and Silicon Valley currently are in America, Europe and elsewhere, and says more will be known once there is more data…",
      "date": "2026-09-14",
      "url": null,
      "linkVerified": false,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/habit-was-the-moat/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/habit-was-the-moat/"
    },
    {
      "part": 10,
      "question": "who-writes-the-checks",
      "side": "not-the-customers-yet",
      "sideLabel": "Not the customers, yet",
      "claim": "Michael Spencer reads declining frontier model usage as a sign that enterprises, startups and power users are becoming more price conscious even as token prices fall, citing Ramp's index showing effective price per million tokens down 41% to $0.68…",
      "date": "2026-09-11",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-insights-is-ai-adoption-slowing-down-ai-risk-debate",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/"
    },
    {
      "part": 10,
      "question": "who-writes-the-checks",
      "side": "not-the-customers-yet",
      "sideLabel": "Not the customers, yet",
      "claim": "Michael Spencer argues that if there really is around US$3.5 trillion of off-the-books exposure on top of capex, the U.S. is in serious trouble if and when the AI boom falters, referencing an August Wall Street Journal report that combined…",
      "date": "2026-09-11",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-insights-is-ai-adoption-slowing-down-ai-risk-debate",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-bubble-is-in-the-denominator/"
    },
    {
      "part": 12,
      "question": null,
      "side": "open-weights-set-the-price",
      "sideLabel": "Open weights set the price",
      "claim": "Chinese AI models captured a majority share of 57% to 67% of total token usage on the OpenRouter developer platform by September 2026, eroding OpenAI's token marketshare even as OpenAI subsidizes its new cheaper GPT-6.1 Sol model.",
      "date": "2026-10-01",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-frontier-google-gemini-4-argon",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-model-is-not-the-price/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-model-is-not-the-price/"
    },
    {
      "part": 12,
      "question": null,
      "side": "open-weights-set-the-price",
      "sideLabel": "Open weights set the price",
      "claim": "Anthropic is far ahead of OpenAI pre-IPO, both in model quality and ARR, and that lead should only accelerate with IPO proceeds heading into its November IPO.",
      "date": "2026-10-01",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-frontier-google-gemini-4-argon",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-model-is-not-the-price/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-model-is-not-the-price/"
    },
    {
      "part": 14,
      "question": null,
      "side": "the-bill-has-moved-to-debt",
      "sideLabel": "The bill has moved to debt",
      "claim": "A Financial Times report found OpenAI's annualized revenue as of late September 2026 was approximately $50 billion, roughly $20 billion lower than the $70 billion figure that had previously circulated in financial media.",
      "date": "2026-10-09",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-off-the-charts-ii-state-of-ai-2026-chart-summary",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-cash-arrives-unevenly/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-cash-arrives-unevenly/"
    },
    {
      "part": 16,
      "question": null,
      "side": "crossing",
      "sideLabel": "Voices that cross sides",
      "claim": "Anthropic is far ahead of OpenAI pre-IPO, both in model quality and ARR, and that lead should only accelerate with IPO proceeds heading into its November IPO.",
      "date": "2026-10-01",
      "url": "https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/ai-frontier-google-gemini-4-argon",
      "linkVerified": true,
      "storyUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/stories/the-seller-holds-the-paper/",
      "sidesUrl": "https://deepstack.ltd/sides/the-seller-holds-the-paper/"
    }
  ],
  "coverage": null,
  "lastUpdated": "2026-10-22"
}