OpenAI's ambitious GPT-5 project has hit a series of roadblocks, as its core team has been decimated by poaching from Meta and grapples with a data bottleneck, severely impeding research momentum and resulting in minimal performance enhancements. Consequently, the anticipated Orion model has been downgraded to GPT-4.5. Despite these setbacks, OpenAI has managed to secure a whopping $8.3 billion in funding, pushing its valuation to an impressive $300 billion.