OpenAI's ChatGPT has been the fastest-growing platform in history ever since the chatbot launched 925 days — 2½ years — ago. Now, CEO Sam Altman is moving fast to out-Google Google, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

Why it matters: OpenAI aims to replicate the insurmountable lead that Google built beginning in the early 2000s, when it became the world's largest search engine. The dream: Everyone uses it because everyone's using it.

• OpenAI is focusing particularly on young users (under 30) worldwide. The company is using constant product updates — and lots of private and public hype — to cement dominance with AI consumers.

🖼️ The big picture: This fight is about winning two interrelated wars at once — AI and search dominance. OpenAI and others see Google as the most lethal rival because of its awesome access to data, and research talent, and current dominance in traditional search.

• This is probably the most expensive business war ever. Google, OpenAI, Apple, Amazon, Anthropic, Meta and others are pouring hundreds of billions of investment into AI large language models (LLMs).
• It's not winner-take-all. But it's seen as winner-take-control of the most powerful and potentially lucrative new technology on the scene.

Altman is selling himself — and OpenAI — as both the AI optimists and early leaders in next-generation search. Anthropic, by comparison, is warning of dangers, and focusing more on business applications.

• Two events this week — one private, one public — capture Altman's posturing:

1. Axios obtained a slide from an internal OpenAI presentation, featuring Similarweb data showing website visits (desktop + mobile) to ChatGPT skyrocketing in recent months, while Anthropic's Claude and Elon Musk's xAI Grok remained pretty flat. (See chart above with related data that Axios obtained directly from Similarweb.)

• ChatGPT is building a similar advantage in mobile weekly active users (iOS + Android), according to SensorTower data cited in the presentation. "ChatGPT's adoption continues to accelerate relative to other AI tools," the slide says.
• Altman proudly displayed the data on Tuesday during a closed-door fireside chat at a Partnership for New York City event in Manhattan that drew a slew of titans, including Blackstone Group co-founder and CEO Steve Schwarzman, KKR co-founder Henry Kravis and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

2. Also on Tuesday, Altman posted an essay called "The Gentle Singularity" — basically a bullish spin on ChatGPT and AI. "In some big sense, ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived," he boasted.

• The Singularity, a Silicon Valley obsession, is defined by Altman's ChatGPT as: "the hypothetical future point when artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that it triggers irreversible, exponential changes in society — beyond human control or understanding."
• Altman often talks about approaching AI from a position of cautious optimism, not fear. The piece reflects Altman's synthesis of tech, business and the world — a signal that he wants to be the leading optimist in the space, and thinks it's the long term that really matters.

Altman dances around the dangers — wiping out jobs or AI going rogue, for instance — and paints a utopia of humans basically merging with machines to cure disease, invent new energy sources and create "high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces."

• "Many people will choose to live their lives in much the same way, but at least some people will probably decide to 'plug in,'" he writes.

The other side: Anthropic says the user data above paints an incomplete picture because Anthropic is currently more focused on enterprise applications — selling Claude's interface to business customers — than consumer adoption.

• Similarweb figures show Google Gemini catching fire, moving into second place after ChatGPT.

🔮 What's next: We hear the pace of OpenAI innovation is accelerating. Over the summer, look for the company to release powerful new models aimed at bringing superpowers to health care, the auto industry and science.

• Altman talks about the next three years as being focused on agents, scientific breakthroughs and robotics.
• Agents will accelerate the company's own AI research. Specific products are being developed to equip scientists to do research at a pace not seen. ("We already hear from scientists that they are two or three times more productive than they were before AI," he wrote in this week's piece. And Jony Ive, the legendary Apple designer, joined OpenAI last month to create AI devices.
• Another way OpenAI is building for supremacy: The Stargate Project, investing in AI infrastructure, aims to ensure the company has the compute power it needs to achieve its ambitions. That also attracts talent, because engineers know that processing power means they get to build cool things.

The bottom line: All that's behind the confidence Altman is expressing — he knows he has a huge moat around his consumer adoption. And if users keep plugging into OpenAI in mass numbers, Altman will realize his ambitions of being the next Steve Jobs — but more powerful.

• Share this column ... Megan Morrone contributed reporting.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has embraced a new attack line in his ongoing showdown with Donald Trump: The president — who turns 79 on Saturday — is slipping, Axios' Alex Thompson writes.

• "He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he's incapable of even a train of thought," Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, told Fox LA. "He's lost it."

Why it matters: Newsom, who was among the many Democrats who repeatedly attested that Joe Biden was sharp and ready to serve another four years, is now among those suggesting that Trump — the oldest president ever inaugurated — is showing signs of not being up to the job.

• Newsom's jabs at Trump's age are part of a barrage of criticisms he's tossed at Trump in the past week. He's called Trump a threat to democracy who is putting the U.S. on a road to authoritarianism.

🔎 Zoom in: Newsom repeatedly has mocked Trump for mangling dates and words.

• "Trump doesn't even know what day it is," Newsom wrote on X after Trump said he'd spoken with Newsom on Monday, when their conversation actually had been two days earlier.

With a concerned look on his face, Newsom also noted that Trump had stumbled up the steps to Air Force One over the weekend.

• In 2024, Trump's campaign frequently used video of Biden tripping up those stairs to argue that Biden, then 81, was no longer fit to be president.

Keep reading.

For the first time in 20 years, the board of the UN's nuclear watchdog formally declared that Iran is in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

• Iran responded by immediately vowing to establish a new uranium enrichment facility.

Why it matters: Tensions are soaring in the Middle East over the possibility that Israel could strike Iran's nuclear facilities, which could lead to retaliatory missile attacks against American bases, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

• The U.S. is evacuating nonessential staff from its Baghdad embassy and family members of military personnel from several bases in the Gulf.
• The State Department has restricted travel for U.S. government employees inside Israel.

Trump told reporters last night that the U.S. personnel were being moved out of the region because it "could be a dangerous place. We'll see what happens."

• When asked what could bring tensions down, Trump stressed: Iran "can't have a nuclear weapon — we're not going to allow them."

Keep reading.

A tuxedo-wearing President Trump was booed and cheered as he took his seat for the opening night of "Les Misérables" at the Kennedy Center.

• Why it matters: It was his first time attending a show there since becoming president, reflecting his focus on remaking the institution in his image while asserting more control over the country's cultural landscape.

Trump has a particular affection for "Les Misérables," the sprawling musical set in 19th-century France, and has occasionally played its songs at his events.

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President Trump's reputation as a consummate dealmaker is being challenged by his second-term record, Axios' Dan Primack and Dave Lawler write.

• Why it matters: Supporters inside and outside the White House regularly rhapsodize his negotiating skills. Unorthodox moves are lauded as part of "The Art of the Deal."

If Trump's dealmaking stature were to erode, it could limit his flexibility on everything from tariffs to taxes.

🖼️ The big picture: The bar Trump set for himself may have been impossibly high, but he's a long way from clearing it.

• He said he'd make peace in Ukraine on day one. That was more than 140 days ago.
• He said he'd make peace in Gaza. A ceasefire collapsed months ago, and talks are deadlocked.
• A two-month deadline for reaching a nuclear deal with Iran expires today.
• He said that trade wars were "good and easy to win." So far, the U.S. doesn't have a single trade deal finalized and implemented. The closest ones are with the U.K., with which America has a trade surplus, and with China, which remains just a framework.
• He hasn't yet approved deals over the future of either TikTok or U.S. Steel.
• The "Big Beautiful Bill" is increasingly unlikely to hit his desk by July Fourth.

🕶️ What we're watching: It's entirely possible that Trump will seal one or all of those outstanding deals. Momentum, however, is tough to find.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of America's most powerful lobbying groups, is pushing for policies it believes will unleash 3% economic growth, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.

• The Chamber's new chairman, Ross Perot Jr., is blunt about the challenges of getting there in the short term.

Why it matters: The group has cheered President Trump's agenda as pro-growth, applauding efforts to relax regulations and extend current tax policy. But tariffs are the dividing issue — one the Chamber says is weighing on small businesses and the broader economy.

🏛️ "This year is going to be tough," Perot told Axios in an exclusive interview at the U.S. Chamber offices, across Lafayette Park from the White House.

• "I think because we're waiting for the tax code, and so you've got a little bit of uncertainty there," Perot said. "Then I think people are waiting on where we are going to go on tariffs. Once that settles down, we can all go to work."

Perot — a north Texas billionaire and real estate developer whose late father, Ross Perot, ran for president as an independent in 1992 — will be charged with pushing that message.

• Perot Jr. takes over as the new chairman of the U.S. Chamber today working with the group's president and CEO, Suzanne Clark.

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Bananas are losing some, ahem, appeal. Prices for the ubiquitous yellow fruit are on the rise — even as inflation cools, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Why it matters: Tariff increases are starting to drive inflation for certain goods. Items that are perishable and can't be produced domestically are first in line.

Enter the banana, which until now had been resistant to inflation in part due to free trade agreements that no longer apply thanks to the blanket 10% tariff imposed by the White House.

🧮 By the numbers: Banana prices rose 3.3% in May from the previous month to 66 cents per pound, according to Consumer Price Index data out yesterday.

• Inflation overall ticked up 0.1% over the same time period.

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Republicans routed Democrats 13-2 for their fifth consecutive win at the annual Congressional Baseball Game, which raises money for charity and was first played in 1909.

• The GOP leads the all-time series 47-42.

More pics ... Rosters.