Driven by the terrifying prospect that a new technology might generate wealth they do not personally control, dozens of highly successful founders are tragically returning to the office.
Founders who successfully sold their previous consumer internet platforms for hundreds of millions of dollars are reportedly rolling up their sleeves and returning to eighty-hour workweeks. Industry analysts note that this sudden wave of labor is entirely motivated by a deep, existential dread that the artificial intelligence boom might accidentally enrich an outsider.
Despite already possessing enough generational wealth to purchase multiple sovereign landmasses, these executives are willingly subjecting themselves to the grueling reality of building new startups from first principles. The sheer horror of missing out on AI's defining moment—and the subsequent unmonopolized capital—has forced them to abandon their philanthropic vanity projects and return to active hoarding operations.
It is heartbreaking to watch a man who already owns a private island subject himself to compute allocation meetings just because he cannot bear the thought of another man buying a slightly larger island.
The returning veterans are currently focusing their renewed efforts on deploying thin enterprise wrappers around OpenAI models, a strategy they believe will successfully capture whatever remaining loose capital currently exists in the ecosystem. Observers report the founders remain heavily caffeinated and visibly terrified that a twenty-two-year-old might experience financial mobility.
At press time, a former cryptocurrency billionaire was seen weeping quietly in a Palo Alto coffee shop while drafting a pitch deck to ensure he receives his rightful share of the impending societal automation.