CTO

DEM_DRY_BONES

Fortunately, as a new CTO in the year of our lord current year, I went e-commerce instead of saas so I’m fine 😎

Etherius

Again, even if a single major western CTO cared about open weights, the thing that far outweighs that is the fact that it’s, again, not just about the model itself but the supporting infrastructure and workspace the models come with.

Bob_the_peasant

Yep. We forced it down every major corporation’s throat for the last two years and it will eventually pay. Even if it’s worse (it usually is), convincing the CTO or CEO is usually all it takes and then the cash faucet is turned on for years

Guilty-Citron9680

But what does your CTO think of it? That’s what really matters.

jeffynihao

Chamath reveals his company's AI token costs are doubling every 45 days but productivity is only up 5% "I sat down with my CTO today, I said how are we doing on token spend. And he said the most incredible thing, he said right now, our token costs are doubling every 45 days. I said well what is the downstream productivity? And he said maybe 5% max." "So my costs are doubling every 45 days, my upside is essentially flat. He said honestly, what we're finding out is that you need to use a lot more tokens to get to this next iteration of improvement because we've effectively already asymptoted." "We're going to take a step back and try to figure out what to do. I don't know how many other companies will actually go through this reckoning now, but the point is everybody in the next three or four years will for sure go through it." "I suspect that if you can get out now, you should get out now before all of that starts to seep into the water table. Because I think that's probably what allows you to get out a

ifdisdendat

I don’t understand the IBM ultra hate on reddit. Sure it’s flawed, but most people commenting are not in IT and under estimate completely mainframes and the fact it runs almost 100% of bank transactions. But again it’s the same crowd that only knows smartphones and don’t know how to turn on a computer and the same crowd who worships Tesla and think that 1T valuation is justified because.. optimus will build space ai datacenters? No one cares about shiny startups when prod is down. Companies run on reliability and good tech that works. And IBM isn’t bad at this. Are they the best in class for every product? No. But no CTO will get fired for choosing IBM.

WeaknessAway5843

As a lab rat myself, I have always believed in Illumina. Their tech is the reason why we are so advanced now in genetics. No one else is even close. Labs care about high quality data, they could care less about an acquisition gone south. And the field of genetics in healthcare is exploding, with many countries only now starting to have the expertise to handle the analysis. There will be a day in our lifetime where at least in the west, everyone will be sequenced at birth. The CTO is a sweetheart and has been there since the beginning. He doesn’t need to work another day in his life if he doesn’t want, but he cares deeply. The CEO comes across as kind, reserved and a good head on his shoulders. I’m very proud to play my small part!

cookingboy

Man IBM is the poster child “boomer tech company” that wouldn’t still be around if not for all the failed-upwards boomer CTO/CIOs falling for slick haired sales men pitching buzzwords. And guess what, AI is now the new darling for those CTO/CIOs, and IBM’s tech is so bad not even their silver tongued salespeople can sell Watson as AI these days. And they even tried to rebrand Watson to Watsonx, which is just a harness/wrapper around actual LLM models. Whelp, that’s what happens when you’ve been focused on sales instead of R&D for the past few decades.

RoboticGreg

You have missed the humanoid hype. It was about 12 months ago (CTO of an ai/robotics company heavily involved with VC and PE rounds)

Crazy_Donkies

I own and run a SaaS and am invested in 5 others. You're using it wrong or your CTO is bad. We just built 3 months worth of sprints in 30 days with zero additional tokens, 2 fewer people involved, all with Claude $20 a month. Plus client work for hire.

RoboticGreg

Lots of startups fail. I learned a tremendous amount, then went to very large companies with the plan to learn how they run and what their processes are, then step down in company size until I learned enough to start another company. On the journey I realized I hated the CEO job, but lived leadership and scaleup companies, startups there's not enough money or time to do things well and it's mostly tap dancing. So my career settled into C-suite tech leadership (CTO, CPO, VP Eng) in high tech startups, C-Round to exit. I basically help tech startups with revenue grow up and learn to eat their vegetables.

Soy_tu_papi_

Show this to his boss and you’ll be the new CTO

RiPFrozone

Trying to flex on the CTO because he didn’t take your unsolicited unlicensed financial advice…congrats on the gains, hopefully you can gain some humility as well.

Own-Recipe5908

[GlobalFoundries CTO on Why the Company Abandoned the “Bleeding Edge” - IEEE Spectrum](https://spectrum.ieee.org/globalfoundries-cto-on-why-the-company-abandoned-the-bleeding-edge) >***IEEE Spectrum*****:** What are you going to do with the two EUV machines you installed? >**Gary Patton:** We’ll be working with [ASML](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/asml) to figure out the best use of them. A likely or possible outcome is that we end up selling those tools. The China headline doesn't seem well sourced, just accusations about ASML routing one to China through GFS that ASML denies. [Micron is the last memory maker to join the EUV party — company aims for EUV DRAM mass production in 2025 | Tom's Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/micron-pushes-dram-tech-with-euv-lithography-aims-for-mass-production-in-2025) >Micron has finally added advanced EUV lithography to its DRAM production nodes as its newest process node enters pilot production. Unlike its competitors, Micron was in no hurry to use EUV lithography to make DRAM, so it is the last in the industry to adopt the most advanced technology available. This year, Micron began pilot production of DRAM memory on its 1γ (1-gamma) fabrication process, which will [enter high volume manufacturing (HVM) next year](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/micron-delays-euv-ram-to-2025-lays-off-10-of-workforce).  >Today, Micron's memory chip production uses process technologies that rely exclusively on DUV lithography. Basically DUV is sufficient for current memory tech.

PeachScary413

Even the most brain damaged people in the daily thread could see it clear as day... CTO/CFOs truly belong here 🤌

charlies_brain

Can I be the CTO? I'll throw in 100k. I need a job.

Enlighten_YourMind

Can I be the CTO? I will make sure our first corporate wellness endeavor is to provide every employee with a custom built sex robot paid for by the company 🤖

SnoopyTF

Dude nice, im at 10k shares. Give me a job bro, I wanna be the CTO.

ohgodthehorror95

This right here. No CTO of a large corporation would ever risk their career ripping out the company's ERP system and replacing it with some home grown, unproven alternative. Especially when the absolute best case scenario is the company ***might*** save a few bucks. Versus the major productivity loss during the long process of transitioning systems

EddiewithHeartofGold

1. Just look at the most upvoted comments. it is always anti-Musk sentiment or outright nonsense. 2. Your question would be hard to precisely answer without first-hand knowledge of decision making at his companies. Another reason redditors don't know what they are talking about... But the fact that he personally started and funded SpaceX and is the chief lead engineer at SpaceX? Along with CEO and CTO? Also, those who worked *with* him (not *for* him!) speak very highly of his technical knowledge. There is a lot of information out there about his. In books, interviews, podcasts. Verify what I wrote. I stand by it 100%.

DannyDeVitoDildo

I came here to say the same thing. Sure, he purchased companies, but he is the Technoking, Chief Engineer, and CTO. He has an impact on every product produced. Like you, I gave up as soon as the guy started spewing political echochamber nonsense. This is an investing sub, not a political one.

RoboticGreg

I'm a CTO of a tech company, my entire software team uses cursor, I'm just terrified he's going to give it the Twitter treatment. We are already migrating away. Cursor is FANTASTIC, I can't believe they are going to ruin it like this

AgreeablePudding9925

I own 100,000. I guess that makes me the CTO?

nighte324

Excuse me good sir but I claim chief tech officer as the proper regard with 18k shares. I shall dub thee as my assistant to the deputy CTO.

theoppositewayaround

engineer here. Im also in for 3k shares so ill take CTO, or plant maintenance supervisor.... if of course there is a plant....

LaundryOnMyAbs

Adobe doesn’t have a ceo right now. Or cfo. Or CIO. Or CTO… the entire leadership has been jumping ship

calvintiger

\> Why send the data center into space for a lot of money, when you have build one cheaper on ground? It’s not an either or question, the industry is already maxing out building data centers on Earth and has for years. Including SpaceX themselves. I saw an interview with CTO of Meta like 10 years ago that they were building 50 new data centers (which sounded ludicrous at the time) and the bottleneck wasn’t money or land or politics, but the total supply of skilled construction workers nationwide. idk what the bottlenecks are today, but I doubt the situation has gotten much better since then. You’ll probably disagree with the need for so many data centers in the future (just as people did a decade ago), but that’s the future SpaceX is betting on.

Ancient_Perception_6

CTO of our +10k people org **JUST** announced on slack that Anthropic licenses are being cancelled and we are moving to other providers. Crazy because it's a weekend announcement and it's a massive change. We have thousands of licenses. Too risky

BraveDevelopment253

AI didn't write it I did,  i'm also a principal power systems engineer that gets paid over $600k per year to design power systems for semiconductor fabs and data centers.  My wife is also C suite in a different rocket company and her CTO is former spacex and thinks Elon is a fucking moronic tool.   I did ask claude opus 4.8, gpt 5.5, and gemini to review what I wrote and they largely validated what I wrote.  Feel free to do the same and learn something or not, id be fine with a dumb ass like you losing their shirt. 

ObiWanIsMyDog

We replaced an External project management tool. We used something called Basecamp then RocketLane, we built our own in a week and it works better. Shit our actual consumer product we sell as a company, our CTO who built the entire thing with 40yrs of tier 1 industry experience says a homegrown solution for most software will always be the hardest sell for us. The reason is it’s just dialed to your use and your team and you can customize it whenever you want. Now that same fact will just be true for other software. You still need the industry and nuanced requirements knowledge to build it right. But you don’t need an Asana to provide the service if you’re willing to manage the QA/Bugs/ future dev.

OpenRole

Would you rather have a CFO turned CEO or a CTO turned CEO. Because the CFO will give you what you want, but the CTO will innovate

LostFaithlessness201

The CTO dumped $18 million worth of shares recently if that does not raise red flags maybe puts

_hiddenscout

It’s not just him, but more and more companies are talking about cutting back on their AI token usage or spend. I think it’s somewhat of a crack in the story and actually could fuel some SaaS narratives and drive those higher. Uber talked about it recently. Here’s Walmart: > CTO: Walmart is implementing AI usage limits to reduce redundancy, improve efficiency & control cost > "There are large classes of problems that people are doing again and again...You don't need to keep asking Code Puppy the exact same question again."

Opposite_Day_9771

From Dell and HPE earnings, enterprises don't buy custom ASIC AI chips. It's all about modular x86, GPUs, maintainable, upgradeable, re-useable servers. They're running AI locally with open source LLMs. This is the dot com build out all over again with standard networking equipment. Hyperscalers custom ARM chips with everything integrated is cheaper but a toaster. You can't repurpose it. One bad memory chip and you'll end up e-wasting everything. No CTO is going to take this approach. It's a bubble.

Acceptable_Treat7580

tu pourras **peut-être acheter l’action après l’IPO**, et éventuellement participer à l’IPO uniquement via certains intermédiaires… très limités peut-être fidelity ou charle schwab je n'en sais pas plus Tu pourras investir avec CTO européen après l'introduction sinon

hotgrease

What could go wrong with 2026 Elon being CEO, CTO, and Chairman?

lollipop999

"Musk will be CEO, CTO, and Chairman..." https://preview.redd.it/qvo9ca1n3r4h1.jpeg?width=1015&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=434b05d013947e9afc96c4ebe642c6e0c477c6dc

obijuanquenooby

CEO, CTO and Chairman. You stupid fucks are cooked.

derprondo

Gitlab, room to run 100%+, already up 20% in the last week. Earnings are tomorrow, expect a big move due to agentic coding adoption driving big revenue increases for consumption based billing products like pipeline runners. GitHub is crashing everyday for the same reason and their CTO admitted they’re struggling with the insane increase in load, Gitlab is seeing the same.

derprondo

It’s not even in competition with Claude, but Claude is the reason you should buy Gitlab. GitHub is being crushed by Claude under the greatly increased load from agentic coding adoption, their CTO even came out and said as much. Gitlab is experiencing the same and their earnings are tomorrow after close.

DungeonsAndDradis

My company's CEO after telling our CTO that we should just have an AI agent do the entire software development life cycle.

sobe86

RL = post-training. A bit suspicious you don't know that, I'm guessing you aren't an engineer :b. My friend at Anthropic told me this, maybe they're wrong. The big labs aren't going to cut prices, they're already running a loss (Anthropic's profitable quarter is an accounting trick). My guess is that in the next year they're all going to switch to token based pricing, at which point people with personal accounts are going to see the true cost here. On top of this a lot of the enterprise CEOs are starting to say they'll probably cut back on AI-maxxing, because it costs too much and they're spending comparable figures to their human salaries. There's a lot of uncertainty around everything and one CTO saying one number is a very shaky thing on which to base your entire argument.

pizzababa21

according to nvidia majority of costs for their customers are still pretraining. dunno where you get your information. if you cut pre training you differentiate on post training. that is literally already the case. a bit suspicious that you don't know that so im guessing you're not an engineer. the 80% margin was a bare minimum estimate by a CTO who has inference set up for their free and low cost models. he actually seemed very confident that the margin at labs is closer to 99% than 80%. he doesn't really have an incentive to lie here and it was in an engineering focused medium that few investors would see. you can say it's not sustainable to keep that margin, which is fare, but those are the current margins and even of they drop it's still a significant starting point. Deepseek and Xiaomi had recent drops due to engineering advancements around cache which they published for others to implement. the big US labs might drop prices soon too but they don't have much incentive to when they're already compute constrained because their direct to user products (claude code/cowork and codex) are already relatively affordable and popular. having more money does get you access to more information. private investors always ask for data room even at seed level. that means they would be aware of the unit economics.

pizzababa21

well OpenCode CTO recently said that when they started hosting opensource models he realized the model conpanies have 80-99% profitability at inference. we're seeing less returns for pre training so there's a good chance that gets cut completely by 2030, meaning their biggest cost would be gone. given the rate of growth they'll likely be extremely profitable then. private investors do actually get this information before they commit billions so they're likely way more informed and have teams of professionals working for them to value these companies.

CompetitiveSport1

Are they prepared to pay the actual cost when the AI companies stop subsidizing? Which they've already started to do by the way. Will your CTO continue when the cost is in the hundreds of thousands?

derprondo

I'm up 16% on 1000 Gitlab shares, but I'm going to let it ride through earnings on Tuesday. I'm either going to end up breaking even or it's absolutely sending it on the ER. If unaware, GitHub's CTO explicitly acknowledged that AI agents and AI-driven development workflows contributed to recent infrastructure overload and outages. The same must be true of Gitlab, so their products that are billed on consumption (eg pipeline runners) should see some big revenue increases.

WalkIntoSunshine

Long day for me so forgive the hasty response. I believe they will be taking a stake for approx 18.75%, and soon. Just my opinion after my own dd. Aptiv has stated they need a LiDAR partner and are in process of selecting one. They also mentioned bolt on acquisitions in their last EC, as well as wanting the right LiDAR partner. Multiple quotes about heavy equip/mining/ag, industrial, drones, and defense. Mvis issued a pr almost every week in April about each of those. Current CEO of mvis Glen DeVos was former Aptiv CTO, and senior VP. The gentlemen who took his role was at mvis prior in a specialist position. He has stated Mvis is the best LiDAR company (granted during his tenure there) Many, many more connections, including engineers and hr. Mvis has also rolled up Scantinel and Luminar in the last 6 months. They have the most robust LiDAR portfolio now and are able to offer 905, 940, 1550c ToF, FMCW. Mvis is also EU sovereign (they filed for a German subsidiary after Scantinel acquisition). They are one of the only LiDAR companies that are approved for EUD when hundreds of billions are being pumped into defense globally. Research IntelicBASE, Brave1 (awards coming next week and some starter announcements about plans have been dropping today) There’s a lot more. It’s a steal right now. I believe they will be the dominant LiDAR player in the market. (There will be room for a few) Short interest continues to be ridiculous. There’s the whole LBS for AR conversation happening as well. High risk/high reward. Some feel a reverse split is coming soon. I believe it will be a strategic investment. One of us will likely be wrong. Personally not worried if it does an r/s. The tech is too important and the future finally caught up to it. LiDAR will be everywhere soon Apologies again for the sloppiness of this. Limited time and gotta run.

icantflyjets1

Anthropic is absolutely profitable on inference, they have a 44 billion ARR currently and it’s growing. Major tech CTO’s are flocking to them. Your perspective is outdated and wrong.

DiggWuzBetter

Mine does, the CTO posts leaderboards of both Cursor spend and Claude Code Premium extra usage, where a dev spending more is considered good. Not actual customer value/impact delivered, just how fast you’re using spending. Highly incentivizes just always using the most expensive model, asking Claude/Cursor about things you already know the answer to, having really long running sessions to maximize context size, asking Claude/Cursor to analyze vast amounts of logs, etc. The more wasteful the better, as the founders are all-in on AI, and maximizing your token usage is considered good, full stop.

Assistant-Manager

I’m so torn on this one. A lot of what I find online seems very promising. But the one red flag for me is I asked one of my friends who’s a CTO in a Swedish semi conductor start up and he says he’s never heard of them.

Brilliant_Voice1126

Would love to see you rake AMFN next for their pure hopium on fusion, no prototype, no permits, led by crooks, and a ufologist for a CTO.

babyd42

you should probably mention Lisa Su used to be the CTO of the company this used to be under (Everscale) before they spun it out on its own... Also they just announced 1.8M more shares, expect a 10% drop Monday. I'm going big into this one, it's a game changer. Memory while powered off? Edge AI is the next trade, hence why Blackberry is also on fire right now.

habfranco

Grok has zero use in enterprise world. No CTO would ever risk allowing agentic use with it. It will always have marginal consumer use, for shit and giggles.

dorkstar1

SpaceX targets June 12 IPO on Nasdaq under $SPCX at $1.75T valuation. Musk holds 85.1% voting power as CEO, CTO, and Chairman. Q1 revenue hits $4.69B with $4.28B net loss If this is not scam , what else is

NotMe357

"BREAKING: SpaceX targets June 12 IPO on Nasdaq under $SPCX at $2T valuation. Musk holds 85.1% voting power as CEO, CTO, and Chairman. Q1 revenue hits $4.69B with $4.28B net loss"

MaterialGuy007

NVDA CTO prob made a false statement saying companies are making more money than AI investment - we hv yet to hear from someone?  AI is not affordable!!!!

TouchGrassRedditor

>$1.75 trillion valuation >Musk would remain CEO, CTO, and chairman I could not possibly be any further out, holy shit

LankyGuitar6528

Amazing timing. I've been training my AI to act like a mini Bloomberg terminal. It's scraping SEC data and 2 seconds before I read your post it fired this to me: **May 18, 2026 three top officers ALL sold simultaneously:** * **Susan Li (CFO):** \~$5.6M across 7 lots at $604-$611 * **Andrew Bosworth (CTO):** \~$4.8M across 8 lots at same price range * **Javier Olivan (COO):** \~$893K across 5 smaller lots **Combined: \~$11M+ in coordinated officer selling on a single day** — and that's just the top three. No buying. Zero insider open-market purchases.

Rich-Kaleidoscope-12

You’re right, it’s a lot of trial and error not just at this level. However look at the company as a whole, I search for companies with a product not an idea, who uses the product, is it tied in to other things? Example: GPUS has bitcoin in its bank, if the value of BTC drops so does their cash at hand. If BTC is 🚀 they will follow, There’s a lot of penny stocks that rely on the big guys to do well specially NVDA. I was in ABAT and shifted over to USEG @ .73 in April sold at 1.23, and waited I’m now back in at .89. I looked at USEG as having a physical product, helium, and contract at hand (5m in the UK) even though their financials were garbage due to them shutting down the oil refinery to expand their helium. Once that plant is done and the contract is executable they should hit target of 1.6-2.0 but it’s speculation. So that’s the risk. I guess what I’m saying is, don’t just research on where the company is now, look at what affects it and where the market could be headed. Also look at their leadership. New CTO new COO? A new board member could be joining to prove something depending on their background. If they come from a big tech they probably got let go, or made enough money to make this their new project. If they came from nowhere or somewhere small they are excellent and want to prove they can grow it OR dad cashed in a favor. Got to do your research. But the volatility of these small stocks is so fast, you got to do it on the fly and sometimes throw it in on black and hope it hits. CXAI is my double 00 right now and killing it, up 30% and climbing. In a nutshell I practice the research by looking at these companies that do well and see what was the factor on why they went up and then look for future ones following those footsteps. lol 😅 I feel like I’m rambling, over caffeinated! Have a good one!

TheSquirrelCuisine

I love that you did this because this should have been part of the real post. I put $100 on Lordstown Motors beccause the CTO was a friend of mine and I wanted to see that company do well. Well they didnt and I learned something about investing that day. Last time I checked 100 turned into $7. lol Oh well.

Brilliant_Voice1126

Oh is that so? Not one fucking piece of data has come out of yours. I have proven my thesis. it is is the 10k. it is in public tweets from the CTO that he is a UFOlogist. You say they have prototypes, they have proof. Where is it? You're the one coming up fucking short. Make fun of the grok link, it has primary sourcing for everything, including his literal books on how he believes the martians existed but blew themselves up with nuclear bombs. The guy is a psycho. Hawkins narrowly dodging an SEC violation is on the public record. He was back dating options to give stocks to his buddies and skated out of it by the skin of his teeth. You got grifters, you got crackpots, and still, not a single shred of evidence that these guys have a working model - because they don't, because it's near impossible. If fusion is going to originate from anywhere it will be from the Ignition lab at Lawrence Livermore. Not the basement of a UFOlogist.

Brilliant_Voice1126

Oh, so it’s good and normal for a business CTO to be a UFOlogist? That’s a good sign? Where did I say any single false thing? No working model No prototype No proof. Just the word of a guy who thinks the govt is out to get him because he believes in antigravity and martians. At a certain point, you can’t call these mere personal attack but actual devastating liabilities.

imunfair

> What are you talking about lol?? He’s the CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the company Gwynne Shotwell runs the company, you could take Elon out of the equation and it will function just as well or better than it does now.

trix_is_for_kids

What are you talking about lol?? He’s the CEO, CTO, and Chairman of the company

fack-the-suits

If openAI fails, every CEO/CTO of companies on azure will get fired and there will be massive sour taste that could potentially lose MSFT their vendor lock-in. Microsoft is garbage and relies on vendor lock in for their entire business, if they were competing in a purely “best product” environment, they would lose on literally every product offering. Azure is so fucking garbage

shasta747

So my company had early access to Anthropic's Mythos for free trial, only a few had this access so to avoid being doxxed (my gay manager might be on here LOL) I wouldn't say the name. Long story short, Anthropic's quote for Mythos comes today and it so fucking expensive the office of CTO decided to not buy it, and say if lower tier models have 80% of what Mythos has, they're okay with that, being from OpenAI/Google/... Whoever can time this bubble will be a living legend.

funfun151

They present at battery shows frequently, their CTO has a substantial pedigree and patent hoard. Amprius are the only other pure play battery company worth bothering with IMO.

Dick_Indadert

AST Earnings? What earnings are you referring to? Numerous times they made 'forward looking statements' about micron production, satellite production, satellite launches and are way behind, and keep missing big their sat production, sat shipping, and launch schedules. The reddit AST mob cant stand anyone who points this out. The real question is, is current CEO the right person to drive production/operations/profitability, or should be really be CTO. I started selling calls on my position to get some money out, if there is nice rip I am going to sell ITM calls and probably unload some stock. I have been holding for a couple of years. This is not a lottery play for me. Just an investment I thought had potential but I am becoming concerned my AST money is tied up and I am missing out on the chip/memory/photonics run. My guess Monday after close is another miss and carefully worded delay of sat production (their sats are large, and they claim for economic reasons they need to launch 3 or 4 stacked a time but seem to have a stacking problem). If the price moves I bet AST dilutes again soon and the price tanks. I have been up and down this ride many times. Monday I am buying calls on quantum/photonics stocks

vassadar

Made me wonder who come up with these metrics. A CTO or a senior director should push back LOC by default.

Opening-Sundae5893

I’m also curious about Cursor. A good friend of mine just accepted a position as their new CTO a few weeks back. He said it is his dream job and told me their growth pattern is absolutely crazy. Fastest growing company ever??? WTF. Being acquired by SpaceX for 60B as a retainer to they can’t sell for a predetermined time. If they don’t buy, SpaceX will pay 10B. You can’t buy their stock because it’s not a publicly traded company. Will SpaceX hurt or help this company with their upcoming IPO. Is it too bloated.

ntheijs

Infrastructure nerd here. AWS’ market share didn’t change. Cloud spend is going up because of AI Our FinOps guy looked like his mistress showed up at his front door when he saw the AI cloud spend this quarter. Looked exactly like our CTO when accounting asked why there was a Hong Kong expense on a trip to Tijuana. He’s a global thinker.

jonneh

**Ex-OpenAI CTO says Altman misled her on AI safety** *On Wednesday, the jury watched a video deposition from Murati, who left OpenAI in 2024 and now leads the AI startup Thinking Machines Lab. Murati testified that Altman told her OpenAI’s legal team had determined a new AI model did not require review from the company’s deployment safety board. When asked whether Altman was being truthful, Murati answered flatly: “No”.* *Murati said she then consulted with Jason Kwon, who served as OpenAI’s general counsel before becoming chief strategy officer, and found “a misalignment” between Kwon’s account and Altman’s. She ultimately ensured the model underwent board review herself.* If we ever get a Skynet my money is on OpenAI to be the genesis of it.

Thebaxxxx

Smart money got in poet real early and stayed. Youve gotta understand the product. Nvda jumped before AI mostly due to millens and genz growing old enough to explain to boomers what a fucking graphics card is. To them it was just this alien thing, a scam. Poet makes chips and has the same CEO who was CTO of a company that developed low nm capabilities, nvda's bread and butter. You, genz and millens, are now the new boomers. You dont fucking understand ai data centers or how they work. Youre like a boomer looking a MOBO fuckin clueless as shit. Good riddence.

mx5plus2cones

I worked in tech for over 30 years. I was briefly forced into retirement 4 years ago when my last employer was acquired and the new management got rid of most of the old senior management team and I was one of 2 remaining senior directors from the old company. They made my life hell and pushed me from a technical role to a pure management role working with the biggest doofuses that was trying to get me fired. I ended up getting 2 of them fired by stepping aside and letting them try to run the project and waited until they failed miserably at it. They tried getting rid of me so they wouldn't have to pay me by bronze parachute package, but I kept fighting back. And I made it and vested the majority of my stock and qualified for my extra bonus. As soon as they realized they had pay it, they let me go with the package and about 6 months of severance and a year's worth of medical coverage.. I quickly sold all of the company stock when it was still around $14-15/share... Currently it sits at $4. During the 4 years I tried s bunch of things. I was volunteer coach on my daughter's high school robotics team. Met a lot of good people (other parents) and we were able to get the to world champs after several years of a drought. 3/4 times. They did great this year long after my kid graduated from hs. I also spent a lot of time going back to school. Yes, I took some networking classes and some AWS classes to just learn, but the fun classes were Automotive technology, engine diagnostics, and Autobody shop and Refinishing. I spent a lot of time in the shop learning how to fix cars, learning every smog rule in our state to see what I could get away with my own track cars, and I repainted 2 of my shitboxes. It was a lot of fun, but at the end of the day I really appreciated my old software career which was a lot less physically demanding... It's not easy to paint a car well, a lot of people like me simply don't have the talent to do it really well, and yet the people that do it very well, aren't necessarily paid well for it despite the demand for it. That and about 4 years of goofing around while the rest of my peers still need to work for a living... Last year I ended up taking up a job that a CTO offered by invite, to work as an individual contributor AI engineer working directly for him... I'm paid about the same as I was as a senior director at the previous job, don't need to deal with people, and have my own lab to run research and prototypes using AI to rapidly develop products, and when the prototypes are done, I throw it over the fence and have the product team figure out how to commercialize it without needing to do any production/product support when it goes live...Then I pickup another project from the CTO to work on with AI, and rinse and repeat. Part of the job involves streamline the product development lifecycle so I spend a good portion of my time helping create Agentic AI bots that do most of the heavy lifting, so the only thing I mainly need to do is a lot of hardware integration just so the bots can connect and interact with the physical devices and systems to do a lot of the embedded software. It's crazy shit, that admittedly I was very skeptical could be done with AI 4 years ago... But now, although the generated agentic AI bot code is far from perfect, it's not bad, not a heaping pile of mess that many people claim it is, and frankly I have not hand written a single line of code since I started this job last March, and we have already come up with about 5 products doing it this way with way faster time to market than the rest of the company, which is why the rest of the company hates us and view us as a threat. My hours arent bad, I don't need really need the salary, but as someone that's always enjoyed working, I just didn't like staying home and working on my cars all day and really don't like to travel, go on vacation, have any sort of drinking or dining fetish, and my kid is already in college. It's nice to go into an office, and see people interact with people, build stuff, and work under the conditions you want to, not because you have to. I think part of being more financially independent give you options. It's not about necessary quitting and not working, it's more about working the way you want. I have no desire to climb the corporate laddar, so I'm no longer perceived as a threat to a lot of people who still want to . And frankly, if they want to , good for them. I don't want to travel, kiss a customer's ass, stay up working 50-60 hours during a product launch, where an electronic dog leash that gets paged when systems go down, and constantly get sucked into meeting after meeting of executive summary, burn down charts, gantt charts... Been there, done that.

luvz

Depends if you want to believe Redditors or CTO’s.

mx5plus2cones

On thing you cannot count on in the US is healthcare expenses . Insurance from the ACA, if it survives, is anything but cheap if you earn a decent wage. And healthcare costs is one of those things that is incredibly expensive. I have a medical condition that requiements me to get a colonoscopy every year and a MRI every year or 2. With a negotiated rate, the colonscopy is about $25,000 and the MRI is about $15,000. So right out of the bat, if I had to pay out of pocket, that's $40k/year. People say, well you can get it cheaper in mexico, thailand, taiwan etc etc. Well, if this s routine checkup, yes. But if this is a routine checkup, I wouldn't be doing this every year. Basically, I have a genetic condition that is guaranteed 100$ colon cancer, and doxtors found out about this when I was early 30ies. Before that I don't drink, dont' smoke, no drugs, and for the most part eat healthy no soda, no excessive sugary snacks, lots veggies, lots of white meat and fish, and red meat sparingly. Sorry, something caused your DNA to mutate because nobody else in familial ancestory or your sibling has it and you're considered a "spontatneous mutation". So basically while most people get their colonscopy in their 50ies and find many 1 or 2 polyps... Doctors found over 1000 polyps in my colon, which basically meant taking the entire thing out. Well I was lucky, because if you take the entire thing out, normally they create a little button for you in front and you get to wear a bag the rest of your life...For me, I had an option they take most of it out and leave the last 5 inches so I can more of less function the same way. But in doing so, that last 5 inches will continue to grow shit, but instead of 1000, it;'s more like 20-30/year. So every year I need to go see Mr. Assman, so he can go remove the 20-30 things that grow in there so they don't develop into cancer, which is guaranteed. Cost aside, it's just annoying as fuck to prep for a colonscopy, drinking that awful fluid, shitting the entire day, and then not being eat for 48 hours before and then after because they also need me to swallow a pill camera to check the rest of my GI track. You're not going to be able to do this at 1/4 the cost in mexico. And if you go to a country where there is universal coverage, you'll be waiting forever to find a specialist that does this, again it needs to be done every year. Here in the states, don't bother if you have a preexisting condition with getting on an HMO plan or with a high deductible HSA plan. And the you are left with a PPO plan which frankly doesn't matter if you pick the bronze, silver, gold, or platinum plan... The diffence between all 4 is the lower tier plan is you pay lower monthly premiums but have higher deductible and out of pocket costs...The platinum plan you pay higher monthly premium but lower out of pocket expenses...But if you do these special procedures, you're going to hit the maximum out of pocket expense anyway, so you end up paying about the same regardless of which plan you pick.. The monthly premimum and out of pocket expenses total about $15k/year or a $10/year saves versus without insurance and goes up with age. Yes, there is such a thing such as mediCal which is free medical coverage, but that only is a free option if you have close to nothing in your savings account, and then you are fully dependent on the social benefits of the US. MRIs, are not better. Simple procedure, but again around $15k out of pocket without insurance. Then let's talk about dental. Fortunately for me, my teeth are pretty decent. But some people dealt a shitty hand, like my GF, just has bad teeth. She brushes all the time, doesn't eat sugary shit, and yet still manages to get severe tooth decay. Dental is one of those things that royally suck in the US, even if you have insurance. Insurance while cheap, maybe $50/month covers very little, usually about $1000-2000 maximum coverage a year. Getting a filling these days cost a few hundred, getting a crown a thousand, and implants, let's not even talk about that. You can try to go to mexico and get it done, like she did , to save money, only for the dentist down their to royally botch things up and caused more damage that good, which is why she ended up needing to get about $20k worth of implants back here. I estimate that both me and my GF's healthcare burn rate is about $25k-40k/year (insurance premiums + copays + out of pocket expenses). There's insurance costs associated with my kid and her kids, but the assumption is when they grow up, they will have their own insurance. There was a period of time when I early retired from tech 4 years ago and that was pretty much my out of pocket healthcare costs for everyone. But as of last year, not that I really needed to work, I went back to work by invite of a CTO to work on AI, as a personal interest, and one of the side benefits (besides a pretty good paycheck that I really don't need, stock grants that are worthless right now) was pretty darn good PPO medical insurance where my total expense for myself and my kid is close less than $1000/year, leaving only my GF's dental costs of a few thousand. Huge huge savings by being on a company sponsored healthcare plan. It's expensive to get sick here in the US. It's even more expensive if you are born with a pre-existing condition. In fact, given everything that happened concerning my medical condition, the followup divorce from it, the detour I was forced to take when some asshole coworker stole my project while on medical leave....I seriously thought about doing the 180 degree reverse and driink heavily, smoke heavily, do drugs heavily, and eat high sugary snacks and food and totally fuck up my health since it couldn't be really fucked up any more and my health care costs to deal with it all would still be the same, lol.

mx5plus2cones

I dont know, but I bought my McLaren when I was forced into early retirement at my last tech job as a senior director 4 years ago. I was invited back to work by a CTO of the competitor working directly for him as an individual contributor working on AI....paid roughly the same as before... I didnt need the extra paycheck...The personal goal is to help bring to market products faster than my previous company....and put them out of business....😈😈😈

bzl33

I'm a LLM bear but my point is it needs to play out first. There is no catalyst to indicate usage dropping yet. Then if these companies all IPO, that'll be a positive catalyst for the AI narrative. > Companies are starting to see AI usage costs pile up. This isn’t getting better soon as the energy supply issue gets worse. Yeah I agree but the corporations all need to overshoot their usage. The Uber CTO acknowledged this but others haven't as much.

DirtyRottenBiscuit

RDDT revising active user count after discovering half of users are bots who don't engage in advertising. They can say they fired CTO to minimize damage.

AlabamaSky967

CFO did not resign. They promoted a recent hire to CTO and moved old CTO to some other position. It's an upgrade situation

laserskydesigns

I've had a former GE CTO tell me the issue is the sodium batteries are extremely heavy currently, but that doesn't mean they can't figure that side out. I'm balls deep on complete lithium extraction from Brine water currently ( DLE + conversion), we're working on series B. I think the US is moving into lithium battery production not out, at least for the next decade or so. Oil booms only last so long from my perspective, but so much of this is riding on where the battery tech is going. Plenty of room for lithium and sodium batteries from my veiw

mx5plus2cones

So when I was briefly retired from tech for 4 years, I was taking a bunch of fun classes at the local community college. Autobody shop, autopaint and restoration...welding...and some basic accounting and bookkeeping, just for the hell of it. I did about a year's worth of classes in a few week... Professor Claude was a excellent study aid. One of the early assignments was completing a balance sheet ... It was also my first time using Claude with OpenOffice... [https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y5Mx3Ry1do9KTHPd9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y5Mx3Ry1do9KTHPd9) But man, after seeing what it could...I went right out early retirement and went right back into tech working on AI with a CTO of a startup doing a lot of very interesting projects in the automoative space. And it's only gotten better...Way better. Our software development pipeline.... Vibe coding was a year ago. Most of it is agentic , spec driven development now. I haven't hand written a line of code myself in about 2 years. And we haven't had a need to hire as many engineers/QA/or for that matter program managers and product managers. It won't replace all jobs. For example, I deal with a lot of on device prototyping with hardware , connectivity, and automotive that requires someone to be phsyically working on the systems with the AI assisted software. BUT, it definitely is a new world out there. Frankly, we don't need as many white collar workers anymore to do much of the work. Just last month, I wanted to to have and OBDII scan tool for my Mclaren to resert the service indicator light, that in the past requires a factory scan tool because it's a feature that is available only on the vendor specific side, not generic OBDII. A factory scan tool to do this is $7000, my Launch X431 Pro is about $1500 and requires a $400/year annual subscription. The better Autel tool is $2500 +$800/year subscription. I simply hooked up a OBDII Y adapter, connected my scan tool on one end of the Y, and a CAN bus to USB dongle to the other side of the adapter, got it setup with claude, and wrote up a spec that had claude listen on the CAN bus reording the traffic, as I used the my Launch scan tool to go through the OBDII interface to reset the service light. Claude captured the entire CAN trace, and generated a brand new Python app to do the exact same thing as my $1500 scan tool with a $400/year subscription... in about 20 minutes. Sure it was a little buggy at first, and dog slow. And I barely know Python, but after dorking around with it for a bit longer and making minor modifications, I had a duplicate OBDII scantool in a few hours, which without AI would have taken me weeks to figure out myself... And because of it, I don't need to pay the $400/year annual subscription fee for my OBDII scan tool moving forward. This is exactly why a lot of the software company's stock is tanking out of fear. For some things (not all things), you don't need to buy the pre-packaged software anymore...

PrinceDX

Sorry champ. Even as a director I still have a CTO I report to and I’ve been on a hiring freeze since July 2025. The push I’ve seen in the industry is for more offshore with AI support. You have an engineering degree so you are going to have to make yourself standout by laser focusing a specific area. AI is the money maker right now and a ton of devs use AI but they don’t build AI. I’m too busy trying hit release dates and send clients their machines back to even really have time to up skill myself. If you can get some certifications I’d imagine you’d find something quicker than you think.

Singularity-42

Axios out here clutching pearls because Uber's CTO blew his AI budget. Bro that's a forecasting L not an economics story. Compute per useful output is still falling off a cliff. NVDA cooked, stay long.

FearlessTrader

I was holding about $10k worth of RDDT till last week on which I was up about 10%. Sold because of the CTO’s departure but I have a feeling I sold too early 🤔

luvz

Compared to what? Nobody likes ticket systems. And nobody cares that mid level office people make rhymes about it. No CTO ever got shitcanned for choosing ServiceNOW. And every current CTO knows that when they’re getting pitched the decks from competitors. Follow the money, not the memes.

No-Newspaper-7693

What I'm saying is that this post is about two AI products. You're talking about it like there's an AI product and a non-AI product. Figma is an AI product specifically made for designers to try to bridge some of the gap with engineers. Claude Design is basically the other way around, helping engineers do more design. Figma was once not AI heavy, but that isn't the product as it exists today. Everything they've added for the past few years revolves around AI. I use Figma everyday, but also I recognize that a large chunk of the CTO's that pay for their company's Figma seats will choose to drop it and tell everyone to use Claude Design instead. It is the same way that a large chunk of CTO's choose Microsoft Teams over drastically superior chat tools like Slack. Claude Design can't be used for all of them, and it will be used in a lot of places where it shouldn't, but that isn't going to prevent it from getting used anyway.

Kind-Armadillo-2340

They hired the new CTO as an EVP 3 months ago (source is LinkedIn). I’m pretty sure they’ve been planning this since then.

getbentspez

More ads, more bots and the CTO is leaving. Smells like calls

CrustyBappen

The poor CTO and team at the whim of the dogshit the CEO and product team make them build

CommunismDoesntWork

Here's a list of sources that all confirm Elon is an engineer, and the chief engineer at SpaceX: # Statements by SpaceX Employees **Tom Mueller** Tom Mueller is one of SpaceX's earliest employees. He served as the Propulsion CTO from 2002 to 2019. He's regarded as one of the foremost spacecraft propulsion experts in the world and owns many patents for propulsion technologies. >Space.com: During your time working with Elon Musk at SpaceX, what were some important lessons you learned from each other?   >   >**Mueller:** Elon was the best mentor I've ever had. Just how to have drive and be an entrepreneur and influence my team and really make things happen. He's a super smart guy and he learns from talking to people. He's so sharp, he just picks it up. When we first started he didn't know a lot about propulsion. He knew quite a bit about structures and helped the structures guys a lot. Over the twenty years that we worked together, *now he's practically running propulsion there because he's come up to speed* and he understands how to do rocket engines, which are really one of the most complex parts of the vehicle. *He's always been excellent at architecting the whole mission, but now he's a lot better at the very small details of the combustion process.* Stuff I learned over a decade-and-a-half at TRW he's picked up too. [Source](https://www.space.com/tom-mueller-impulse-space-mira-spacecraft) ​ >Not true, I am an advisor now. Elon and the Propulsion department are leading development of the SpaceX engines, particularly Raptor. I offer my 2 cents to help from time to time" [Source](https://twitter.com/lrocket/status/1099411086711746560?s=20) ​ >We’ll have, you know, a group of people sitting in a room, making a key decision. And everybody in that room will say, you know, basically, “We need to turn left,” and Elon will say “No, we’re gonna turn right.” You know, to put it in a metaphor. And that’s how he thinks. He’s like, “You guys are taking the easy way out; we need to take the hard way.”   >   >And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing. [Source](https://streamable.com/4o1k6d) ​ **Kevin Watson:**  Kevin Watson developed the avionics for Falcon 9 and Dragon. He previously managed the Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group within the Autonomous Systems Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory. ​ >Elon is brilliant. He’s involved in just about everything. He understands everything. If he asks you a question, you learn very quickly not to go give him a gut reaction.   >   >He wants answers that get down to the fundamental laws of physics. One thing he understands really well is the physics of the rockets. He understands that like nobody else. The stuff I have seen him do in his head is crazy.   >   >He can get in discussions about flying a satellite and whether we can make the right orbit and deliver Dragon at the same time and solve all these equations in real time. It’s amazing to watch the amount of knowledge he has accumulated over the years. Source (Ashlee Vance's Biography). ​ **Garrett Reisman** Garrett Reisman ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Reisman)) is an engineer and former NASA astronaut. He joined SpaceX as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety and mission assurance. ​ >“I first met Elon for my job interview,” Reisman told the USA TODAY Network's Florida Today. “All he wanted to talk about were technical things. We talked a lot about different main propulsion system design architectures.   >   >“At the end of my interview, I said, ‘Hey, are you sure you want to hire me? You’ve already got an astronaut, so are you sure you need two around here?’ ” Reisman asked. “He looked at me and said, ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re an astronaut. I’m hiring you because you’re a good engineer.’ ”   >   >“He’s obviously skilled at all those different functions, but certainly what really drives him and where his passion really is, is his role as CTO,” or chief technology officer, Reisman said. “Basically his role as chief designer and chief engineer. That’s the part of the job that really plays to his strengths." ([Source](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/26/spacex-how-elon-musk-took-idea-cusp-history/5257977002/)) ​ >What's really remarkable to me is the breadth of his knowledge. I mean I've met a lot of super super smart people but they're usually super super smart on one thing and he's able to have conversations with our top engineers about the software, and the most arcane aspects of that and then he'll turn to our manufacturing engineers and have discussions about some really esoteric welding process for some crazy alloy and he'll just go back and forth and his ability to do that across the different technologies that go into rockets cars and everything else he does. ([Source](https://youtu.be/GNG6ZzDh9C8?t=390)) ​ **Josh Boehm** Josh Boehm is the former Head of Software Quality Assurance at SpaceX. >Elon is both the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, so of course he does more than just ‘some very technical work’. He is integrally involved in the actual design and engineering of the rocket, and at least touches every other aspect of the business (but I would say the former takes up much more of his mental real estate). Elon is an engineer at heart, and that’s where and how he works best. ([Source](https://www.quora.com/Does-Elon-Musk-do-some-very-technical-work-code-design-etc-at-SpaceX/answer/Josh-Boehm?ch=10&share=8dc8bc2e&srid=Xuwj)) # Statements by External Observers **Robert Zubrin** Robert Zubrin ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin)) is an aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of human exploration of Mars. >When I met Elon it was apparent to me that although he had a scientific mind and he understood scientific principles, he did not know anything about rockets. Nothing. That was in 2001. By 2007 he knew everything about rockets - he really knew everything, in detail. You have to put some serious study in to know as much about rockets as he knows now. This doesn't come just from hanging out with people. ([Source](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/whats-driving-elon-musk)) **John Carmack** John Carmack ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack)) is a programmer, video game developer and engineer. He's the founder of Armadillo Aerospace and current CTO of Oculus VR. >Elon is definitely an engineer. He is deeply involved with technical decisions at spacex and Tesla. He doesn’t write code or do CAD today, but he is perfectly capable of doing so. ([Source](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1038832124747571200?s=19)) ​ **Eric Berger** Eric Berger is a space journalist and [Ars Technica's senior space editor](https://arstechnica.com/author/ericberger/). >True. Elon is the chief engineer in name and reality. ([Source](https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1265080905854574592?s=20)) ​ **Christian Davenport** Christian Davenport is [the Washington Post's defense and space reporter](https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/christian-davenport/) and the author of "Space Barons". The following quotes are excerpts from his book. >He dispatched one of his lieutenants, Liam Sarsfield, then a high-ranking NASA official in the office of the chief engineer, to California to see whether the company was for real or just another failure in waiting.   >   >Most of all, he was impressed with Musk, who was surprisingly fluent in rocket engineering and understood the science of propulsion and engine design. Musk was intense, preternaturally focused, and extremely determined. “This was not the kind of guy who was going to accept failure,” Sarsfield remembered thinking. ​ # Statements by Elon Himself >Yes. The design of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket booster I changed to a special alloy of stainless steel. I was contemplating this for a while. And this is somewhat counterintuitive. It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction. ([Source](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a25953663/elon-musk-spacex-bfr-stainless-steel/)) ​ >Interviewer: You probably don't remember this. A very long time ago, many, many, years, you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it. And I don't think many people get that about you.   >   >Elon: Yeah. I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something, which is fine. Business is fine. But really it's like at SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is Chief Operating Officer. She manages legal, finance, sales, and general business activity. And then my time is almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture. At Tesla, it's working on the Model 3 and, yeah, so I'm in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory. Because the biggest epiphany I've had this year is that what really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. And that is at least two orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself. ([Source](https://www.ycombinator.com/future/elon/)) 

tommytwolegs

This site has been dogshit as long as I've been using it. It's only momentum that has been carrying it forward. I'm pretty sure a toothbrush could have handled the CTO role about as well as this guy did, but maybe he was hamstrung by the CEO, who knows.

christopher_mtrl

Reddit had a CTO ? Hard to believe.

cromwest

The CTO did just quit 

FearlessTrader

I sold my RDDT shares because of the CTO’s departure. Not sure if a stupid move or not. I bought it at quite a low price, was up 10% on them even with today’s dip.

xXFoxyGrandpaXx

He didn’t quit, he’s filling a different role still with the company. New CTO has more experience. It’s just restructuring. I hope

LuBrooo

They had a CTO?

AlgernusPrime

Nothing of that sort, it’s that the CTO is stepping down from management into a fellow role. Fellow is the highest level in engineering. Sounds like he enjoys the tech and not about managing others. I did the same shit but kinda like a Wendy shift manager to flipping patties.

Ahamadrayasbaboon

Could be a lot of things. Maybe he needed more time with his family. Maybe the CTO gig had him spend a certain number of days at a specific location that he doesn’t like and the new one doesn’t. There are lots of reasons.  With that said, it is concerning without knowing why. 

paulfromatlanta

>> one week before the earnings. He was CTO, my guess is failure to stop AI agents scraping the site without paying.