OpenAI's top AI users are its biggest spenders. Omnicom outsourced the team behind its AI.
In the twelfth episode of Assistant to the CMO, Lexie Meskouris speaks with Will Nash and Harjot Singh about what a company can measure and own, and whether either one tells you what it can actually do.
OpenAI published two sets of numbers this month showing its heaviest enterprise users pulling away from everyone else. Will Nash reads it as a cost metric dressed as maturity, since OpenAI's "frontier firms" are simply its biggest spenders. Harjot Singh reads it as a mirror of the power-user distribution that always existed on individual plans. They agree the number is weak, then split sharply on what should replace it.
The second half turns to Omnicom, which moved at least 468 people who built its Omni AI platform to a contractor while still owning the platform, the data and the clients. Will argues that owning data you cannot change is worth little. Harjot argues 468 is not a big number and the real failure sits with leadership. Both expect the product to drift from the company selling it, and that is the question to ask at renewal.
Highlights of this Episode Include:
- Frontier Firm Means Big Customer: OpenAI's top usage decile measures spend, and Will says a cost line is being presented as innovation.
- Tokens Are Not Usage: A legal team running long contracts burns tokens a hundred short prompts never will, so the growth curve misleads.
- Enterprises Are Mini Networks: Harjot explains how one person's AI habit spreads to co-workers and compounds into exponential usage.
- Marketing Ranks Fourth For a Reason: Will argues its repeatable work was automated years ago by software that does not bill in tokens.
- A Privilege You Cannot Abuse: Will's line for Omnicom keeping data it can no longer maintain, improve or reshape without calling a supplier.
- 468 Is Small, or It Is the Tell: Harjot calls it routine Pareto maths, Will calls it too large to be only the engineering team.
- One Hour and a Blank Page: Harjot's Monday move is to map a workflow, then ask whether you would build it that way starting today.
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New episodes of Assistant to the CMO land every Thursday.