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OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

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

#291
post #28

This announcement completes the betrayal of their founding principles. "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." - Not advancing digital intelligence - While locking people into a superapp - Because they are further constrained to generating financial returns

Founding principles = initial marketing strategy

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

#292

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.

With NASDAQ and NYSE looking to reduce the timelines for new public companies to be included into indices (“fast entry” rule), I have a feeling that OpenAI and SpaceX and Anthropic are mostly looking to dump their inflated shares into the public’s retirement accounts by force. Michael Burry called out this structural manipulation play recently: https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/03/51248353/michael...

Retirement accounts aren't required to buy a stick just because it's listed.

... probably will though

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

#293

Does anyone know if this, like the spacex/xAI stock — will list on nasdaq? And will it be part of every market cap weighted index fund like VOO(S&P) etc or just for nasdax-100 etfs? The exchanges are bending head over heels to accommodate these IPOs[1] and make our retirement index funds the exit-liquidity strategy to the thievery of pump and dump actors that buy it low and then sell high? As i understand the way thi…

They are pushing hard to be part of the nasdaq 100. You can shift your retirement funds from the nasdaq to the Dow or s&p

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure for like $5-10MM, but no one is landing $100B cash in a startup's bank account

$100B isn't a startup. And if there's a $100B deal, you better believe the cash is there. Case in point - Netflix/Paramount wanting to buy WB. Or the $44B that Musk had to raise to buy out Twitter shareholders.

Both your examples are purchases. Musk had to raise actual capital to buy Twitter because the people getting the money were taking it and walking away.

Funding doesn't work like that. Investors are giving you money as part of a longer-term deal where they stick around.

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

#295
post #215
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see a lot of advantages for Amazon, but I don't see why it would be tax-advantageous.

Situation A: You're Amazon. You give OpenAI $50B cash investment, they then hand you back the $50B over time because they buy $50B worth of Amazon AWS services (they would use AWS or other equivalent compute anyway). OpenAI pays an additional $1-5B in sales taxes on top of their $50B compute purchase. Now let's say you have $25B opex for said compute. You then have $25B profits, you pay 21% corporate taxes on the pro…

You have to report barter transactions as income. And Amazon already pays 0% corporate income tax.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common structure. It's confusing to people who don't know finance or startups when they first see it. Even VCs don't get all of their fund money delivered into their bank account when they raise a funding round. It's inefficient and undesirable for everyone involved to have to move all of the money up-front, at once. If you talk to anyone in startup funding or finance they'll be familiar with the term "capi…

I've been involved in many startups, and this type of fundraising is not common, or at least it wasn't common before a few years or so ago The whole concept of talking about "runway" is basically calculating how much cash in the bank, that is actually in your bank account, will last. And this arrangement is different, as there are contingencies. In the past, VCs would just give you money in a particular series, and t…

Same. I know $100m+ range arrives in the bank account. Don’t know more than that. But for that sum, I know it routinely just arrives.

Obviously this is 1000x as large so I make no claims to knowing that sum. But it’s routine for startup funding to arrive in bank account.

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

#297
post #7

I'm old enough to remember when companies worth $1 billion were called "unicorns." Now we have a company raising 122 times that? Valued at nearly 1000 times that...? At least they're throwing consumers a bone via the ARK deal. It's crazy how little AI exposure is available to anyone who isn't already wealthy and/or connected.

Even a billion dollars is crazy money. If you have a company with a subscription service that costs $100 yearly, you have ~2m customers, with a 50% profit margin. Your company makes ~100m every year in profit. Imo that's what is actually worth a billion dollars, maybe even a bit less.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for 3 different startups where the CEO at one point gave us the talk of "we're building a super app". Admittedly openAI is in a better position to do it, but not by much. Everyone wants to be WeChat in china. No user wants that from them.

WeChat is not a super app. It's a browser. Tencent WeChat is the equivalent of Google Chrome.

Is it a browser or like a browser? I've never actually used it but from what I understand WeChat's mini programs are like web apps but not something you can open up in a typical browser.

Alternatively, you could say browsers are the original super app.

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