Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 426 posts

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#141

Post by andsoitis »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #107
seydor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will managed funds do? Are we now suggesting people get out of index funds? Worse, will this and spacex ipo destroy the index funds?

Destroy is a strong word. Rather, it will make the pension funds and passive investors the bag holders for the oligarchs.

> Rather, it will make the pension funds and passive investors the bag holders for the oligarchs.

Care to explain the mechanics? I’m an investor (both in passive and more active vehicles) and don’t understand what you mean.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#142

Post by throwaway-away »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #73
amusingimpala75 wrote: post #72

How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny? Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?

> How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny? Perhaps they will just tell a lot of lies. In the past people would generally avoid this when it came to stock market filings for fear of legal consequences, but the OpenAI C-Suite is already at least +$26 million to Trump and has plenty more to send his way if that doesn't cover…

Crime is legal, but investors can and will dissect your 10-Q/10-K statements. Anyway, I think that the Administration covering their asses in the face of doubtful numbers will shake investor confidence in the tech field. In fact, most investors will think one of these two things:

1. "Look, even OpenAI, which is the face of the LLM tech with ChatGPT, needs assistance from POTUS to stay afloat, the tech is not profitable"

2. "Crap, all this circular economy going on with Nvidia/OpenAI/... is bogus after all if even OpenAI needs the White house support to survive. There is not enough demand".

Regardless of the specifics, if this sentiment spread enough (and it doesn't have to be the majority of investors) everyone, regardless of their beliefs, will start selling to avoid being the last one standing when the music stops.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#143

Post by aurareturn »

sandeepkd wrote: post #71

Looks like there is only limited money in the market and there is a race to get it first. Wonder if the free market concept should move the prices down in such a scenario?

I think it's because the private market can't possibly go any higher. OpenAI is already valued at around $1 trillion and just raised $122b.

The only next step is the public market.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#144

Post by lupajz »

hattmall wrote: post #84
amusingimpala75 wrote: post #72

How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny? Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?

I believe, but could be wrong, is that the big change is the time frame for index and managed funds buy in. It used to be a year, but it's much shorter now, like 2 weeks. Which means as long as they can maintain a high market cap relative to their exchange for that time period they will be stabilized by institutional funds and basically crowd sourcing any losses to the public and massively cashing out the internal pr…

I think some ETFs need just 5 trading days for it to show. For S&P500, to my knowledge, the stock needs to be traded at least for 1 quarter.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#145

Post by andsoitis »

juleiie wrote: post #140
sentientslug wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is terrible advice, are you buying and self balancing hundreds of different stocks?

It is very true what they said. In an ETF you get both bad stocks and good. You have no choice. If you diversify manually you can pick and choose only the crème de la creme But… people love to be lazy or just aren’t knowledgeable enough to pick their stocks themselves and thus it is safer for them to just stick to broad strokes of an index fund. For starters as basic portfolio, you could 1:1 an index fund but take ou…

If that were true, then one would expect a competitive fund that does just that and that give higher ROI than an S&P 500 index fund (or index ETF) when you consider expense ratio. What is a such a fund? Or, alternatively, can you point us to a comprehensive list of those companies you would exclude from the index to get superior returns?

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#146

Post by anal_reactor »

psb5 wrote: post #109
techtuate wrote: post #95

I was wrong - not investing in FB and Amazon many years ago - thought those businesses will shrivel and die. I believe OpenAI is a bit of a coin flip as the AI space evolves. In fact I feel all AI will be marginal return generators at best. There are a lot of incumbents and a lot more coming as barriers to entry get increasingly lower. Unless a company can build a near monopoly it'll be hard to justify a 100X revenue…

All that is a side show. What would you have done with the cash if you were right? Thats always the real story. My Aunt runs an accounting firm and is constantly moaning about the number of people who have over accumulated cash from IPOs and have no clue what to do with it all.

I would retire.

If you have two million euros lying around, that would be life-changing money for me. I'd put everything into VWCE and then live off interest. I think I'd spend a year in Japan just to see what it's like, then travel around a few other countries, and finally settle somewhere back in Europe - buy a small house in the middle of nowhere, renovate it, and then smoke weed and play video games until the end of my days.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#147

Post by [deleted] »

psb5 wrote: post #109
techtuate wrote: post #95

I was wrong - not investing in FB and Amazon many years ago - thought those businesses will shrivel and die. I believe OpenAI is a bit of a coin flip as the AI space evolves. In fact I feel all AI will be marginal return generators at best. There are a lot of incumbents and a lot more coming as barriers to entry get increasingly lower. Unless a company can build a near monopoly it'll be hard to justify a 100X revenue…

All that is a side show. What would you have done with the cash if you were right? Thats always the real story. My Aunt runs an accounting firm and is constantly moaning about the number of people who have over accumulated cash from IPOs and have no clue what to do with it all.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#148

Post by throwaway-away »

bob1029 wrote: post #135
eclipsetheworld wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectively, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia already own approximately 25 - 35% of OpenAI and Anthropic respectively. They already are a part of your portfolio.

This kind of indirect exposure might look good on paper but it's never even remotely a linear mapping in practice. Holding the underlying directly is the best bet if you want to minimize the possibility of getting screwed over by external factors while maximizing your practical exposure. It really sucks to be right and still get punished for it because Xbox or windows shit the bed last quarter.

Agreed. The mere "mass" of these companies dampen any movement that the underlying asset has. I mean, in a earning call it might just be a line item in the "Others" section. And even if they made/lost billions it is a small % of the quarterly profits of such companies.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#149

Post by [deleted] »

hattmall wrote: post #84
amusingimpala75 wrote: post #72

How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny? Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?

I believe, but could be wrong, is that the big change is the time frame for index and managed funds buy in. It used to be a year, but it's much shorter now, like 2 weeks. Which means as long as they can maintain a high market cap relative to their exchange for that time period they will be stabilized by institutional funds and basically crowd sourcing any losses to the public and massively cashing out the internal pr…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#150

Post by andsoitis »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #91
amusingimpala75 wrote: post #72

How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny? Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?

The CFO doesn't even report to Sam Altman directly. I would not assume that the decision is up to her in any meaningful way. I predicted a while ago and still stand by an 80% chance that their S1 is disastrous on the scale of WeWork; so, so much of what people think they know about OpenAI's finances is based on snippets and rumors rather than firm audited statements.

Sarah Friar, the CFO, took both Nextdoor and Block public.
Post reply on HN