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OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

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Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#151

Post by Jensson »

khazhoux wrote: post #131
lukebechtel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the development of this technology was originally done under a certain set of promises ostensibly intended to prevent pure capitalist profitmaxxing. The workers and supporters who were taken by this idealistic vision, believe it was a bait-and-switch, and that the original promises were never intended to be kept.

> The workers and supporters who were taken by this idealistic vision I haven’t heard from any of the workers. Why are people white-knighting for them? My hot take is that they don’t mind being able to afford a house (or more) for their efforts. Where’s the outraged employees in this conversation? As for “supporters,” what does that mean? People who watch from the sidelines and never actually contributed don’t usuall…

Donors get a say, did donors get any stock? Its very ugly when you built your for profit by stealing donations from a non-profit, people can condemn that even if they themselves didn't personally lose money similarly to how we can condemn companies abusing people even if we didn't work there.

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#152

Post by dmitrygr »

swyx wrote: post #15
leetharris wrote: post #4

This is kind of a wild story. Sam Altman is openly flexing that he was able to skirt the rules and regulations by threatening economic damage to California. It's not even subtle anymore. This reminds me of when the former CEO of Hyundai, Chung Mong-koo, went to prison for embezzlement. In just 3 years he was pardoned because the President of South Korea basically said, "we need you for the economy." We're not even pr…

> threatening economic damage to California. whoa there. corporations have the right to move to the best location for them. California does not have the eternal right to OpenAI's taxes and employee base. think about what you're implicitly assuming here. if one company simply leaving causes concerning "damage" then perhaps it is the government that is the problem, not the corporation driving economic growth.

> California does not have the eternal right to OpenAI's taxes and employee base

ehh....

https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/california-exit-ta...

Skip to the "What California Can Still Tax After You Leave" section

If they do this to people, i am sure they can to corps too

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#153

Post by Jensson »

gretch wrote: post #3
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

It used to be that you could find an IPO underwriter after 100M in revenue and growing YoY above others in the competitive basket. I’m not sure that’s true anymore, I think you still need the revenue, but just need attention. everything else is just whatever because you can’t predict 10 year outcomes for any business at this point with any level of confidence, and there’s nothing to compare it to other than extremely…

I agree with you and I hope you are right. >Offload a massive illiquid investment onto the public Because this state seems like a very solvable problem: All you have to is not buy it

> Because this state seems like a very solvable problem: All you have to is not buy it

Your index fund will buy them.

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#154

Post by wubrr »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132
wubrr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The location you're physically sitting in doesn't really matter. Saying 'san francisco cause san francisco' is also kinda boring and meaningless.

> location you're physically sitting in doesn't really matter Of course it does. The benefits of proximity to business clusters [1] is well researched [2]. There is no evidence remote work has dampened that tendency; if anything, as evidenced by AI, the effect seems to have increased. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster#Cluster_effec... [2] https://www.isc.hbs.edu/competitiveness-economic-development..…

You're linking to pre-covid studies, that mention some types of benefits (for specific reasons like logistics benefits for businesses relying on physical materials/goos, or physical access to people for the purposes of networking), for some kinds of industries, and also mention that these benefits are not seen for some industries.

> Sometimes cluster strategies still do not produce enough of a positive impact to be justified in certain industries.

Let's take a step back and look at the fundamentals of a tech company who's employees are remote - what are the specific benefits of having a San Francisco office?

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#156

Post by JumpCrisscross »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

It used to be that you could find an IPO underwriter after 100M in revenue and growing YoY above others in the competitive basket. I’m not sure that’s true anymore, I think you still need the revenue, but just need attention. everything else is just whatever because you can’t predict 10 year outcomes for any business at this point with any level of confidence, and there’s nothing to compare it to other than extremely…

> Offload a massive illiquid investment onto the public so that investors make their fund

Anyone with OpenAI stock can do this in the private markets right now to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Not billions. But I'm not convinced liquidity--versus appreciation, for investors, and access to capital, for the company--is the primary motivation for going public.

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#157

Post by platevoltage »

rxyz wrote: post #21
swyx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> threatening economic damage to California. whoa there. corporations have the right to move to the best location for them. California does not have the eternal right to OpenAI's taxes and employee base. think about what you're implicitly assuming here. if one company simply leaving causes concerning "damage" then perhaps it is the government that is the problem, not the corporation driving economic growth.

Corporations used to not have that much political power

Yeah. The East India Company was famously powerless.

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#159

Post by hamdingers »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #102
brokencode wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but most of the country’s AI talent is concentrated there. Not to mention venture capital. What’s the advantage of moving? Maybe lower taxes and a cheaper rent. That seems like a small price to pay compared to the hundreds of billions they’re putting into data centers.

They're concentrated there because they've been asked to concentrate there. That can change on a dime. It's not like data centers are mainly in SF.

You've got it backwards.

Well paid engineers congregate in California because it's a nice place to live if you can afford it.

Therefore if you want to hire the best engineers, and want an in-office work culture, you need to go to California.

Re: OpenAI’s promise to stay in California helped clear the path for its IPO

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wubrr wrote: post #154
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> location you're physically sitting in doesn't really matter Of course it does. The benefits of proximity to business clusters [1] is well researched [2]. There is no evidence remote work has dampened that tendency; if anything, as evidenced by AI, the effect seems to have increased. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cluster#Cluster_effec... [2] https://www.isc.hbs.edu/competitiveness-economic-development..…

You're linking to pre-covid studies, that mention some types of benefits (for specific reasons like logistics benefits for businesses relying on physical materials/goos, or physical access to people for the purposes of networking), for some kinds of industries, and also mention that these benefits are not seen for some industries. > Sometimes cluster strategies still do not produce enough of a positive impact to be j…

> linking to pre-covid studies

I'm linking to studies summarising a century of work. There is no evidence Covid changed this.

Exhibit A for Covid having not changed this is the continuing supremacy of Silicon Valley (tech), Shenzhen (manufacturing) and New York (finance) as industrial clusters that others have tried to replicate (everyone, America and Miami, respectively) and failed.

> Let's take a step back and look at the fundamentals of a tech company who's employees are remote - what are the specific benefits of having a San Francisco office?

Proximity to investors. Proximity to customers. Proximity to a skilled employee pool. Proxomity to acquirers. (A lot of deals happen at cocktail parties and ski trips.)

By the way, I'm not arguing anyone needs an office. Just people physically and and proximate to the cluster.

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