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OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

cnbc.com

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Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#121

Post by Swizec »

troupo wrote: post #107
aurareturn wrote: post #58

$2b/month which is $24b/year. Not as much as I expected considering they were at $20b by end of 2025.[0] They only added $4b since? Anthropic had $19b by end of February 2026 and they added $6b in February alone.[1] This means if they added another $6b in March, they're higher than OpenAI already. However, I heard that OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue in a different way. OpenAI takes 20% of revenue from Azure sale…

And that is revenue only. In the past 15 or so years most US companies (and especially startups) always talk about revenue only. Wheras only profit should matter. E.g. what good is 20 billion per year when "OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending through 2030". That is $150 billion per year?

> Wheras only profit should matter

Profit is money you couldn’t figure out how to spend. During growth, you want positive operating margins with nominal profits. When the company/market matures, you want pure profits because shareholders like money. If you can find a way to invest those profits in new areas of growth, that’s better.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#122

Post by aurareturn »

troupo wrote: post #107
aurareturn wrote: post #58

$2b/month which is $24b/year. Not as much as I expected considering they were at $20b by end of 2025.[0] They only added $4b since? Anthropic had $19b by end of February 2026 and they added $6b in February alone.[1] This means if they added another $6b in March, they're higher than OpenAI already. However, I heard that OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue in a different way. OpenAI takes 20% of revenue from Azure sale…

And that is revenue only. In the past 15 or so years most US companies (and especially startups) always talk about revenue only. Wheras only profit should matter. E.g. what good is 20 billion per year when "OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending through 2030". That is $150 billion per year?

It's not as much as you think. Google is spending $185b on data centers this year alone. Amazon is spending $200b this year. Total capex for big tech is ~$700b in 2026 and we're not including neo clouds, Chinese clouds, and other sovereign data centers.

Since everyone is trying to get compute from anywhere they can, including OpenAI going to Google, it's hard to tell what is used internally vs externally.

For example, it's entirely possible that Google's internal roadmap for Gemini sees it using $600b of compute through 2030 as well. In that case, OpenAI needs to match since compute is revenue.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#123

Post by twoodfin »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #78
rvz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic doesn't have anything else other than the Claude models. But notice that no-one , not a single mention of Deepseek tells me that they are preparing to scare everyone again. Which is why Dario continues to scare-monger on local models. Sometimes you do not need hundreds of billions of dollars for inference when it can be done locally with efficient software; and Google proved that. But where is the money in…

Local models just make no economic sense since the GPU will idle 99% of the time.

[dead]

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#125

Post by pier25 »

troupo wrote: post #107
aurareturn wrote: post #58

$2b/month which is $24b/year. Not as much as I expected considering they were at $20b by end of 2025.[0] They only added $4b since? Anthropic had $19b by end of February 2026 and they added $6b in February alone.[1] This means if they added another $6b in March, they're higher than OpenAI already. However, I heard that OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue in a different way. OpenAI takes 20% of revenue from Azure sale…

And that is revenue only. In the past 15 or so years most US companies (and especially startups) always talk about revenue only. Wheras only profit should matter. E.g. what good is 20 billion per year when "OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending through 2030". That is $150 billion per year?

Give me a billion and I'll have 500M of revenue in no time by selling dollars at 50 cents.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#126

Post by Barrin92 »

merlindru wrote: post #119
troupo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is revenue only. In the past 15 or so years most US companies (and especially startups) always talk about revenue only. Wheras only profit should matter. E.g. what good is 20 billion per year when "OpenAI is targeting roughly $600 billion in total compute spending through 2030". That is $150 billion per year?

why should only profits matter? if i had a killer product today that i just need to sell tomorrow, wouldn't you still invest today knowing i'll probably only start to make money tomorrow (or perhaps next week)? the expectation is that they'll eventually make money. they can't raise forever. only startups are not profitable for a few years. but most companies that have existed for a long while have been profitable and…

not if your product is selling two dollars for one dollar and as soon as you'll start to charge more I'll switch to one of your twenty competitors

profit isn't a function of having a killer product, it's a function of having no competition

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#127

Post by jelling »

caycep wrote: post #99
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #57

No, they didn't raise $122B as the HN title implies. A big chunk of that $122B is a "maybe" that depends on various things that need to happen in the future. Oh, man... I can't wait to see where this is going. Might not be pretty after all.

that being said, how can Softbank keep throwing around all these astronomical numbers after so many bad investments? Leftover iPhone money?

They borrowed $40B from JP Morgan. They literally did not have the money otherwise.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#128

Post by Ethee »

changoplatanero wrote: post #100
Ethee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of makes me wonder how 'accelerated' the timeline of publishing this article was based upon the Claude Code leak today. Considering everyone has gotten a sneak peek at what Anthropic is working on OpenAI might be a little worried. This could also just be coincidence, but this piece really does read like self-encouraging fluff.

The timing of this coming out today is cause today is the last day of the month/quarter and has nothing to do with Claude.

Ah, yeah that makes way more sense, I always forget about financial quarter timings.
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