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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

#221

Post by danielmarkbruce »

int_19h wrote: post #192
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very cynical, and almost certainly deliberately false take. Many situations are fundamentally uncertain with respect to laws/rules in place. The idea that they "skirted rules and regulations" is wrong. Did they push in an attempt to get a decision made which would favor them? Sure. But there was a decision to be made. And, the people are supposed to be in control anyway, not the government.

This is Sam Altman we're talking about, a man with a long track record of conning people. I don't think any benefit of the doubt is warranted here - I'm going to assume guilty unless and until clearly proven innocent because you only get to screw people over so many times.

It doesn't matter who it is, it's naive about how the legal system works and takes the worst possible view of all the actors involved.

This wasn't some straightforward matter. Many things are not. OpenAI are not obliged to passively sit and wait while various other parties try to influence the outcome (and there were many, and they weren't nobodies).

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

#222

Post by nmfisher »

laluser wrote: post #186
nmfisher wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but I feel like OpenAI raised far more money than those companies, burned through it far quicker and has much more competition with a much shakier value proposition. They definitely have a strong consumer brand so it’s not like they’re going to disappear, but I understand the bear case.

Sam A is pretty well connected and knows the game well. No doubt there will be some risks where the whole thing goes right down to zero, but I personally wouldn't bet against them.

I'm sure Sam A will be fine, an IPO will probably see him ride off into the sunset with billions.

The average public investor buying pre-IPO shares, though, is a different story.

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

#223

Post by rvz »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #119
khazhoux wrote: post #107

I don’t understand the animus towards OAI going public. ChatGPT undoubtedly changed the world. The non->for profit status of the company is not impacting anyone. It’s not like their success was made possible by being a non-profit. Suddenly everyone here is very very concerned with the classification of this corporate entity, and I detect people feel personally slighted. Why is that?

They founded OpenAI on the explicit premise that advanced AI poses existential risks to humanity, and that a non profit structure was essential to prioritize safety over profits. They reaped major benefits from this status, including tax exemptions, easier talent recruitment (by appealing to mission-driven researchers), and massive donations. Then, once GPT models exploded in value, making the for-profit arm worth te…

i.e: it was a complete grift.

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

#224

Post by danielmarkbruce »

terminalshort wrote: post #175
wbl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when the AG sues the board and Sam for all the violations that happened around his ouster. The board isn't independent.

Violations such as?

Such as those made up in people's heads because they don't happen to like a guy they never met.

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

#225

Post by vlovich123 »

CPLX wrote: post #202
terminalshort wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to downplay the network effects here, but it's in CA entirely by coincidence. SV is in CA because William Shockley's family is there, which is why he founded Shockley Semiconductor there. It could have been somewhere else. The 2nd largest tech hub is in Seattle. It's there because that's were Bill Gates is from. Is SF the best place to start a startup if you want in office talent in 2025. 100% yes, but t…

It goes back way way further than that. The special mix of government funded technology, ruthless entrepreneurship, and social engineering predates Shockley by almost 100 years. Start by figuring out who Leland Stanford is and how he got rich. Read the book ‘Palo Alto’ if you’re looking for a good starting point.

Yeah it’s quite bold to suggest that Shockley would have done the same thing outside the environment of the Bay Area rather than that someone other than Shockley would have done what he did in California if he wasn’t there or that even if he did it outside California that people inside California still industrialize it. It’s a very individualistic view of progress which is uniquely American and unlikely to capture how stuff happens given that multiple discoveries often happen simultaneously by people working on the problem (eg calculus and Newton vs Leibniz).

The truth is the Bay Area has structural reasons why SV happened and why the same thing has failed to replicate to any significant degree outside the Bay Area.

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

#226

Post by ergocoder »

array_key_first wrote: post #206
swyx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Bonta blocked its plan to convert to a simpler corporate structure. i'm a bit out of the loop but honestly why does California have a say? surely the investor base and Microsoft was a far harder negotiation than this one. this one smells of govt overreach.

Yes, blocking a NON-PROFIT from magically IPO-ing as a for profit company and therefore skirting years of taxes is overreach. Guys, the only state morally bankrupt enough to just allow that is Texas. Why do you think these tech bozos love Texas? It's basically cyberpunk over here. Our government actively hates us. We struck down paid water breaks in Texas. I once worked a job with no breaks at all. 10 hour days, no l…

The point about profit is a bit moot because OpenAI would have never paid any tax if it were for profit, as in they haven't made any profit.

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

#228

Post by starchild3001 »

astrange wrote: post #161
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-modern_portfolio_theory

I recently downloaded about 10 years of monthly price returns for QQQ, TQQQ, NVDA, GBTC, and a few others. Then I asked ChatGPT and Gemini (separately) to find the portfolio that maximizes an adjusted CAGR — roughly, mean return minus ½ × standard deviation².

Result: 70% NVDA, 30% GBTC (Bitcoin), and 0% QQQ or TQQQ. Honestly, not a bad mix — especially for a small, high-risk slice of your portfolio.

Next, I compared TQQQ (Triple Qs) vs. QQQ using the same 10-year monthly data. The optimizer picked 100% TQQQ, which again makes sense if you’re doing this in a tax-advantaged account like a 401(k) or IRA and only with money you’re willing to take some risk on.

Then I expanded the dataset — 55 years of returns across major asset classes (S&P 500, gold, short- and long-term Treasuries, corporate bonds, real estate, etc.) — and asked for the optimal portfolio. The winner: ~85% S&P 500, 15% gold, though 75/25 gives nearly the same return with a better Sharpe ratio.

A few quick takeaways:

Gold → GLDM ETF is the best vehicle.

QQQ → QQQM or TQQQ are the best versions.

And if you’re feeling adventurous: 70% NVDA, 30% IBIT (Bitcoin) isn’t crazy.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been running 75% stocks / 25% gold for a while now, but I’m thinking of carving out ~10% of the stock portion for a more aggressive tilt: TQQQ (6%), NVDA (2%), IBIT (1%) — because why not?

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

#229

Post by shuckles »

terminalshort wrote: post #200
standardUser wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's books written about the Bay Area and the factors that make (or made) it uniquely suited for developing new technologies. There's even college courses about it. Some of it's surely provincial fluff, but it's undeniable that California has been an essential incubator for a whole series of world-changing, fortune-making technologies.

I don't want to downplay the network effects here, but it's in CA entirely by coincidence. SV is in CA because William Shockley's family is there, which is why he founded Shockley Semiconductor there. It could have been somewhere else. The 2nd largest tech hub is in Seattle. It's there because that's were Bill Gates is from. Is SF the best place to start a startup if you want in office talent in 2025. 100% yes, but t…

Shockley Semi was founded 16 years after Hewlett Packard, so you have to keep reaching backwards.

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

#230

Post by SR2Z »

wubrr wrote: post #196
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Exhibit A for Covid having not changed this is the continuing supremacy of Silicon Valley (tech) You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles? > Shenzhen (manufacturing) ..or you mean how US manufacturing 'clusters' almost completely disappeared/replaced by Chinese ones? > Proximity to investors. Proximity to customers. Proximity to a skilled employee pool. Proxomity to acqu…

> You mean like when China built chatgpt 4 in a weekend and open-sourced it for giggles?

DeepSeek R1 is an amazing feat. It's not at the same level as other large frontier models from American companies, just close enough to make them sweat.

> ..or you mean how US manufacturing 'clusters' almost completely disappeared/replaced by Chinese ones?

The value of goods manufactured in the US has never been higher. US manufacturing focuses on goods at the top of the value chain: jetliners, cars, semiconductors, medical scanners, and other advanced electronics. These tend to cluster in a few places - for example, Long Beach is a hub of space and avionics manufacturing, Texas has the "Silicon Prarie," and Boeing in Everett is one of the major employers in the region. Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff.

> Right, cause you have to physically pet every investor on the head to fundraise, your remote employees must be in san fran cause network latency interferes with their windows remote desktop workflow, and, for some reason, you have to be physically close to your customers when you're selling your web-only llm wrapper saas.

You sound sarcastic, but YES. You do generally have to physically be present to make deals. It is obviously theoretically possible to run a world-leading software company fully remote. Despite that, most of them are in-person at least a few days a week. If you want to take advantage of SV's easy VC money, you absolutely have to be present.

Companies are not purely about the numbers. A lot of business is imprecise and heavily dependent on things like just plain LIKING the people you're in bed with, and unfortunately there is no substitute for being in the same room as someone to make a decision like that.

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