The best Stratechery content from the week of December 1, 2025, including what the Times missed in its David Sacks story, Atlassian's history and near future, and Code Red at OpenAI.
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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
What the Times Missed in Its David Sacks Story. On Sharp Text this week, I wrote about the commotion that ensued in tech and media afterthe New York Times profiled Trump Crypto and AI Czar, David Sacks, including an OpenAI-style outpouring of Sacks support, why the piece failed on its own terms, and an entirely different story that went unexplored. While the Times focused on the private interests that may benefit under Sacks’ watch, there are better questions about the public’s interest in leaning on someone like Sacks, and why the government might need Silicon Valley expertise as it confronts a variety of tech questions that have enormous implications for the future of the Western world. —Andrew Sharp
Atlassian’s History and the Near Future. My favorite part of every Stratechery Interview is Ben’s “how did you get here?” question to first-time interview guests, and this week’s interview with Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes is a terrific entry in the series. Come for the story of how a Qantas Frequent Flyer program eventually led to a $40 billion software business in Sydney, and stay for Cannon-Brookes on how his company is adapting to the AI era, as well as his take on “correct, but chronologically challenged” snake oil salesmen. Finally, as a rabid F1 fan, I’d be remiss if I didn’t recommend the end, where Cannon-Brookes expounds on Atlassian’s role sponsoring and helping to transform the once moribund Williams team (a story that can also be marketed to enterprises the world over). —AS
Code Red at OpenAI. I have, for three years now — i.e. ever since ChatGPT took the world by storm in November 2022 — been convinced that we were witnessing the birth of the next great consumer tech company. Today, however, there are very legitimate reasons to be concerned that OpenAI is going to eventually succumb to the Google behemoth, just as Yahoo, Microsoft, Blackberry, and countless others have; I still want to believe that OpenAI can be an Aggregator, but they don’t have the business model to match, and that may be fatal. I summarized all of these feelings in this week’s episode of Sharp Tech, which covered both this week’s Article about OpenAI and Nvidia angst, and Tuesday’s Update about the bear case for OpenAI. — Ben Thompson
Stratechery Articles and Updates
Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI— OpenAI and Nvidia are both under threat from Google; I like OpenAI’s chances best, but they need an advertising model to beat Google as an Aggregator.
OpenAI Code Red, AWS and Google Cloud Networking— OpenAI is declaring code red and doubling down on ChatGPT, highlighting the company’s bear case. Then, AWS makes it easier to run AI workloads on other clouds.
AWS re:Invent, Agents for AWS, Nova Forge— AWS re:Invent sought to present AI solutions in the spirit of AWS’ original impact on startups; the real targets may be the startups from that era, not the current one.
