Solana Founder Links Elon Musk and Altman's AI Slowdown to 'Profitability at $1 Trillion Market Cap'
TL;DR
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko sarcastically linked the AI industry's call for a slowdown to the desire of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to maintain their trillion-dollar valuations. He criticized the hypocrisy of these firms, suggesting they should halt their work if they truly believe in the dangers of AI.
Key points
- Anatoly Yakovenko criticized AI leaders' call for a slowdown
- AI leaders cite safety risks as a reason for the halt
- Yakovenko links the call to maintaining trillion-dollar valuations
- David Sacks points out hypocrisy in AI labs' actions
- Market reactions suggest no panic over AI development slowdown
Mentioned in this story
Solana blockchain co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko reacted sarcastically to a sudden agreement among AI industry leaders to force a halt to the development of advanced neural networks. Earlier, the heads of Anthropic (Dario Amodei), OpenAI (Sam Altman) and xAI (Elon Musk) simultaneously called for the industry to slow down, citing safety risks. However, the Solana co-founder linked this sudden concern for humanity to the giants' simple desire to lock in their trillion-dollar valuations. Commenting on Amodei's official manifesto, "We Must Pace the Frontier," on X, Yakovenko limited himself to a concise remark: "Profitability at $1 trillion mcap". He followed up with a tweet saying he had told his Codex to use tokens more sparingly, openly mocking calls for artificial pauses.
Profitability at $1t mcap
— toly 🇺🇸 (@toly) September 13, 2026 The Solana founder's message seems obvious: OpenAI and Anthropic have simply hit an infrastructure dead end. Costs for chips and electricity are rising exponentially, while the status these companies have achieved obliges them to show investors real profits instead of endlessly burning through their budgets.
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David Sacks, the former White House special adviser on AI and cryptocurrencies (AI and crypto czar), also joined the discussion. He pointed to the blatant hypocrisy of AI labs — if OpenAI and Anthropic really see a deadly threat in their new developments, they do not need to lobby for laws covering the entire industry; they can simply halt their own work voluntarily. Instead, the top-down regulation being imposed serves two pragmatic goals:
- Eliminating startups: strict restrictions will block the development of young companies and free open-source projects (such as Meta's work and the Hugging Face platform), which have begun rapidly catching up with the commercial leaders. In effect, this creates an artificial duopoly of OpenAI and Anthropic.
- A global AI truce is utopian, as China will not comply with such agreements. Under these conditions, restrictions on American labs would amount to voluntary technological capitulation by the U.S. Interestingly, despite all these statements, markets are not pricing in panic at Monday's stock market open. According to the prevailing consensus, a possible slowdown in the development of frontier models does not mean reduced investment in AI infrastructure; it merely stretches out equipment procurement cycles.
Q&A
What did Anatoly Yakovenko say about the AI slowdown?
Anatoly Yakovenko remarked that the AI industry's call for a slowdown is driven by a desire to maintain profitability at a trillion-dollar market cap.
Who are the AI leaders calling for a halt in development?
The AI leaders calling for a halt include Sam Altman from OpenAI, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, and Elon Musk from xAI.
What are the implications of the AI industry's slowdown on startups?
The slowdown could eliminate startups by imposing strict regulations that favor established companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, creating an artificial duopoly.
