Why Fable 5 Is the Most Controversial AI Release Ever

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:01)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, why Fable 5 is easily the most controversial AI model launch of all time.
Before that in the headlines, more chatter about the AI Labs donating equity to a sovereign wealth fund.
The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in.
Now, speaking of aidailybrief.ai, this has come up a couple of times in the past few days in and around my discussions of Fable, but given the increase in capability to just get things done, I have officially pulled the trigger and launched a new AI Daily Brief website. This one is meant to answer the most common request that I get, which is make it easier for us to share specific parts of the episode. Each episode then is going to have a summary page that includes the one big idea, the key numbers from throughout the episode, and 15 to 20 shareable cards that have individual insights, individual quotes, along with timestamps and the ability to link those specific cards out. For folks who want their agents to grab it, you can also download everything on this page as markdown or get the official episode transcript. Now, I decided to push this out fast rather than have it perfect, so there's going to be a lot of rough edges. Please shoot me an email if you have any feature requests. And I hope you enjoy the new AI Daily brief.ai.
We kick off today with President Trump once again calling for a sovereign wealth fund seeded by AI Equity. In a press conference in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said, I'm going to have meetings with the top 12 or 15 executives very shortly, and we're talking about giving something back to the public. And if we do that, the public will become very rich, the people in our country, because that's the kind of money we're talking about. And I think they'll do that, and I think it will make it very popular. Now, The New York Times noted that Trump's comments have, quote, turned up the temperature on a hot topic in Washington and Silicon Valley, as the tech industry reckons with a growing backlash against AI. Sources said that Sam Altman did not discuss the idea directly with Trump during his visit to the White House last week. However, the concept of a sovereign wealth fund was heavily discussed in Altman's meeting with Bernie Sanders. In good news that the world has not gone completely topsy-turvy, Altman did reportedly object to Sanders' proposal of OpenAI giving 50% of their equity to the public.
Back in Silicon Valley, Altimeter Capital founder Brad Gertzner is warning the AI companies might need to pay some form of anti-revolutionary tax. During a conference panel this week, he said, It is destabilizing when you're creating trillions of dollars in private value, and 80% of Americans think it's a scam where they're left out and left behind.
Now, while there is some amount of groundswell around the idea, White House officials said discussions are in very early stages, stating that they're unaware of any real plan or vehicle to acquire stock. Subbing things up, David Yaffe, a professor at Harvard Business School, said, The notion that the government should be a partner in new technology is not new, but the idea that the government and American citizens should have equity is a radical departure from the free market's approach of the world. Then again, The New York Times suggested that all of this might not be some grand plan to reshape the US economic system for the AI age, instead arguing that the concept of an AI public wealth fund appears to have one central animating idea. As they put it, the president likes owning equity in businesses.
Next up, whatever the ultimate state of their equity looks like, OpenAI is closing a deal to stand up 10 gigawatts of data center capacity. Sources told the information that OpenAI is in advanced negotiations to lease a 10 gigawatt data center campus to be built on federal land in Ohio. The campus is expected to cost $500 billion based on current pricing for chips, labor, and power. This would make it not only OpenAI's largest data center commitment to date, but likely the largest data center campus ever built. 10 gigawatts is roughly four and a half times the total output of the Hoover Dam, and more than twice the capacity of the largest nuclear power plants operating in the US. Sources said that NVIDIA is attached as a financial backer, and the current structure of the deal would see OpenAI lease the chips as well as the facilities. They wouldn't be required to begin repayments until the first GPUs are powered up, with 800 megawatts expected to come online in 2028 The total life of the lease could be as long as 20 years. And while one of the critiques of NVIDIA in the past has been participating in some sort of circular financing deals, they haven't previously backstopped any data center deals whatsoever, let alone one of this size. Instead, the deal has echoes of Project Stargate, which was announced at the beginning of 2025 but stalled out earlier this year. Stargate was originally intended to be a $500 billion joint venture with Oracle and SoftBank, who appear to be playing a role in this new deal as well. The site in question is a decommissioned uranium enrichment facility in Pike County, Ohio, around 50 miles south of Columbus. The federal government will own the power plant, with SoftBank's subsidiary, SB Energy, functioning as the plant operator. Now, while it appears that the project is being designed to preempt the major sources of data center outrage, local politics are still turning sour.