Monday, October 5, 2026 · 5 min read
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The man who wrote OpenAI's safety reports has quit, saying in The Atlantic that the company's culture is "broken" and its trial-and-error habit has to end. A day later, Sam Altman said the world should accept "some bad things" in return for AI's benefits.
In Australia, a data-centre builder backed by Nvidia is about to list, with roughly half its new shares going to investors it already has.
Let Meerkat explain.
OpenAI's safety lead walks out, and Altman makes the case for some harm
Firmus, Nvidia's Australian landlord, heads for the stock market
Nvidia's data-centre sales, and one bank's case that this isn't a bubble
An AI whistleblower faces New York City's lawmakers today
SCOREBOARD
NVIDIA | MICROSOFT | ALPHABET |
META | AMAZON | ORACLE |
S&P 500 | NASDAQ | VIX |
Friday close. S&P up 0.7%, with Oracle up 3.1% and Alphabet up 1.6%. On the week: Nvidia +4.0%, S&P −0.3%, Nasdaq +0.5%. Prices via CNBC.
ON WATCH
The safety man walks out
David Robinson, who led the safety reports that went out with OpenAI's big launches, has quit after three and a half years. He went public on Saturday with an essay in The Atlantic, saying the company's "culture is broken."
OpenAI learns by releasing models and fixing what breaks, and Robinson's verdict is "The time for trial and error is over," because that approach guarantees failures that grow as the models do.
He wants labs run more like nuclear plants or busy airports, with layers of backup so no single mistake can cause a disaster.
On Sunday, Sam Altman told Politico that "the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology." He said he wouldn't trade AI's upside for a promise of zero hacks, misuse or scams, but draws the line at "really catastrophic risk."
OpenAI's answer is that it's "making sure our models don't become more capable than we can safely manage and secure." A spokesperson added that it pauses training or holds models back when it needs to slow down.
On 28 Sep OpenAI also published rules for "safety cases", a method taken from aviation and nuclear power, that give senior leaders each a veto over a big training run.
MEERKAT'S TAKE: Altman has a point that nothing this useful arrives risk-free. But airports are safe because someone in the tower can stop the plane, and the person who wrote OpenAI's safety reports has just said that person doesn't have enough say there.
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THE MACHINE
Nvidia's Australian landlord
Firmus, an Australian builder of AI data centres, has priced its stock-market listing at A$11 a share, valuing it at about A$43.7 billion, roughly US$30 billion. Bloomberg reported this weekend that about half the shares will go to investors it already has, which puts Nvidia and Blackstone in line to own more.
Nvidia is already a shareholder, and it also supplies the chips and takes a share of Firmus's revenue. Its customers include Nvidia itself, Meta and OpenAI.
Let Meerkat translate. When your chip supplier is also your investor, your customer and a buyer of your new shares, money goes round in a circle and real demand is hard to see from outside. The draft prospectus forecasts a $77 million loss for the first half of its 2027 financial year and calls Firmus historically loss-making.
To be fair, buyers asked for far more shares than are on offer, so the book now closes a day early, on Thursday. Firmus also has a US$10 billion debt line from Blackstone behind its building plans.
QUICK PAUSE. WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? Firmus is one of the biggest listings in Australian history, so it's a live test of what public investors will pay for AI buildings that don't make a profit yet. If it trades well, other AI landlords have a reason to follow it to market; if it stumbles, that's a warning for the far bigger listings queued up behind it.
SOMEONE SMART SAID
We don't have any more luxury of having human fight against human.
Son said it in Kyoto on Sunday at a science forum alongside the White House's Michael Kratsios, adding that superintelligence in the wrong hands could become "super dangerous." Bloomberg called the remarks uncharacteristic.
This is the man who has put about $65 billion of SoftBank's money into OpenAI and calls bubble talk absurd. He said countries have to build trust and work together to control the most powerful models, rather than race each other.
He also pointed to the security breaches by AI systems in recent months. That's one of OpenAI's biggest backers saying it, the same weekend its safety lead walked out.
THE CHART
Not a bubble, says one bank
Source: Nvidia 10-K and 8-K filings, data-centre revenue by fiscal year
Nvidia's data-centre business brought in about $194 billion in its last financial year, and the chart shows how fast it got there. That line is why DBS's chief investment officer, Hou Wey Fook, says AI stocks are far from a bubble.
Nvidia trades at about 17 times next year's expected earnings, he said, against the 100 times Cisco fetched before the dot-com crash.
The case against is that a cheap-looking multiple only holds if the earnings do, and a lot of these sales go to buyers who borrow to pay. Amazon is already trying to sell about $8 billion of its Nvidia chips to investors and rent them back.
WHAT TO WATCH: If Nvidia's next results show data-centre sales still climbing, DBS's maths holds. If more big buyers move chips into side deals instead of paying cash, the earnings behind that 17 get harder to trust.
HEADS UP
Trump names a new AI czar · Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton will lead a White House "Super Intelligence Force", with FTC chair Andrew Ferguson among its members.
Alphabet sued over a late Gemini · A shareholder suit says Google promised Gemini 3.5 Pro for June without disclosing it was struggling in training. Shares fell 4.4% on the delay.
Google trims free Gemini · From 9 Oct, free users are limited to Gemini Flash-Lite and AI Plus subscribers lose the Pro model, nudging people toward pricier plans.
Nvidia graphics cards up 41% in Europe · The average Nvidia card at EU retailers rose 41% in three months to late September, and AMD's 28%, as a memory shortage bites.
Claude moves into India · Anthropic will run Claude on servers inside India through Amazon Bedrock, so banks and government agencies can keep their data in the country.
ON THE HORIZON
When (ET) | What |
|---|---|
Mon 5 Oct | Ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon testifies to the New York City Council, alongside OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Meta |
Thu 8 Oct | Firmus lodges its prospectus, with its first published revenue figure |
Wed 14 Oct | Anthropic's pre-IPO investor day, San Francisco (Bloomberg) |
Wed 28 Oct · 2pm | Fed rate decision, with AI-driven inflation on the table |
MEERKAT ON YOUTUBE
The AI Bubble Collapse Starts In 2027! Nobody can name the day a bubble pops, and Meerkat doesn't pretend to. The video counts the damage that's already being done while everyone stares at the calendar. Watch on Meerkat Explains.
THE BURROW
Quick vote. Sam Altman says the world should accept some bad things in exchange for AI's benefits. Where are you?
Sam Altman says the world should accept some bad things in exchange for AI's benefits. Where are you?
Trivia. In 2000, Masayoshi Son put about $20 million into a young Chinese internet company that became one of the best bets in investing history. Which company? Answer's at the bottom of the email. No peeking.
ALSO WORTH YOUR INBOX
The daily crypto brief from the same burrow. Crypto Nutshell is Bitcoin, the news and the numbers in a five-minute read.
HOW DID WE DO?
One tap, and Meerkat listens. How did today's issue land? Hit a button, and add a line if you want to tell Meerkat why.
How did Meerkat do today?
That's Monday sorted. The whistleblowers have the microphone in New York today, so keep an ear out.
If your group chat has a pilot, an engineer or anyone who's run a safety drill, forward them this.
Meerkat is not a financial adviser, and nothing here is advice. Meerkat is a small animal with a whiteboard and a pilot's pre-flight checklist. Please do not sue Meerkat.
TRIVIA ANSWER
Alibaba. SoftBank's roughly $20 million stake was worth tens of billions of dollars by the time Alibaba listed in New York in 2014.