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JK
James Kisner
Water Tower Research
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James Kisner (Water Tower Research) says OpenAI's $40B revenue run-rate is somewhat encouraging for AI demand, especially its traction in coding.
I think it's somewhat encouraging. I think we all have expected that Open AI would be growing.
James Kisner says enterprise share is the real prize and Anthropic currently leads on benchmarks and pricing power versus OpenAI.
I think the enterprise is ultimately the real prize. And anthropic also has the leaderboard in terms of performance on a lot of benchmarks. I think that Opus 5 and Fable are still considered the gold standard
James Kisner says investors are rightly no longer accepting hyperscaler AI capex on faith and are demanding evidence of payback.
So I think folks are appropriately cautious that we're not just spending with worthless abandon here, that we're going to see return on those dollars. So again, early days, but I think investors are becoming more discerning, broadly speaking.
Nasdaq since this was said: ▼ -0.8% · 26,729 → 26,507 · as of 2026-09-04
James Kisner says open-weight models are here to stay after Kimi K3 matched frontier performance; the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
like whether you like it or not. Open-way models are here to stay. And a lot of industry folks have come out saying that we shouldn't discourage that.
James Kisner says there are legitimate questions about whether frontier-model moats and pricing power are sustainable given cheap competitors and monthly lead changes.
I think there's a lot of legitimate questions about like what the sustainable mode is, you know, for a frontier model.
James Kisner says circularity in Nvidia financing its customers (OpenAI, neoclouds) is an appropriate concern that only resolves if revenue materializes.
I mean, I think it's, you know, it's an appropriate concern. You know, there's been a lot of talk about circularity in the marketplace.
Nvidia since this was said: ▲ +2.3% · 225.2 → 230.4 · as of 2026-09-04
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