Were they every really scrappy? They had a ton of funding from the get-go.
> In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research announced[13] the formation of OpenAI and pledged over $1 billion to the venture.
>>Alexan+(OP)
Probably not. That was my view of them, but that's probably my not really paying attention. It wouldn't surprise me if there was also some element of them giving a misleading impression, but I don't want to go try and find proof of that.