Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

techcrunch.com

281–290 of 620 posts

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#281

IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part. From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI surviv…

This piece that was on HN yesterday corroborates your gut: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/2/19/how-will-o...

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you watched the news recently?

Do you know any history? You dishonor the people who died from horrible atrocities in WWII to make some glib performative political posturing. It's shameful behavior. Do better. Be better.

WWII didn’t start overnight. The Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as “The Brownshirts,” have a strong similarity to what we’re seeing with ICE and CBP. The SA were Hitler’s enforcers before the SS, during the 1920s and early 1930s. They were eventually usurped by the SS during “Night of the Long Knives” where SA leadership were executed by the SS. Largely because Hitler had felt threatened by the power Ernst Röhm had amassed (among other reasons). And the SA, like ICE, was made up largely of untrained sycophants and thugs who enjoy violence. They committed violence, harassed citizens, and had no consequences for doing so. They were also instrumental in laying the foundation for the genocide and atrocities committed by the Nazi party.

It’s not a dishonor to their memories, or the atrocities committed, to call that out. It is not a dishonor to say there are stark and real similarities between the way the US is operating and treating civilians.

I personally find the opposite, IMHO it is dishonors their memories to refuse to acknowledge the similarities.

I’ve posted a comment similar to this one here before, and like how I ended it. I strongly encourage you to read about the history of Nazi Germany and how it came to happen. It wasn’t just a zero to death camps, it was 15 years in the making. That history is deeply shocking, as it is depressing, because the parallels and timelines are too similar for anything besides outright discomfort, sadness, and fear between it and the US. But without knowing it, we are ever more likely to repeat it.

One final thing to note: the US has a history of extreme violence, slave patrols and the treatment of non-whites of the 19th century were an inspiration for Hitler.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#283
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they "reach AGI", will they have a big party on a carrier with a "Mission Accomplished" banner?

[flagged]

That’s the same definition of reviewing code as saying watching the movie is the same as reading the book it’s based on. No human has ever reviewed 600k lines of code in a month, ever. It’s hard to find someone who can even read and understand that amount in that time.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#284

IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part. From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI surviv…

Comparing OpenAI and WeWork is a nonsensical perspective. OpenAI is shipping the most revolutionary product in a generation, with 800 million monthly active users. It's the fastest revenue ramp ever, at incredible scale -- $20B+ ARR. These are real fundamentals. They matter. And the cost of inference is coming down all the time.

WeWork was a short-term/long-term lease arbitrage business. The two are nothing alike.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#286
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one hand you can look at these companies investing and take it as a signal that there is something there (in OpenAI) that's worth investing in. On the other hand all these companies that are investing are basically getting that investment back through spending commitments and such and are just using OpenAI as a proxy for what is essentially buying more revenue for themselves. I don't understand how this is s…

I give you $100 cash and you give me $100 worth of stock in return. Now you give me $100 cash to buy something from me that cost me $80 to produce. I end up with $100 worth of stock in your company which cost me only $80. No? NVIDIA gross margins lately are like 75%, so it's more like you give me $100 to buy something from me that cost me $25 to produce, hence I end up with $100 worth of stock in your company and it…

> hence I end up with $100 worth of stock in your company and it only cost me $25.

You also lost out on $75 worth of cash revenue (opportunity cost from selling the same thing to a different customer), so really you just took stock in lieu of cash.

It'd be different if Nvidia (TSMC) had excess production capacity, but afaik they're capped out.

So it's really just whether they'd be selling them to OpenAI and getting equity in return or selling to customers and getting cash in return.

If OpenAI thinks their own stock is valued above fundamentals, it's a no brainer to try and buy Nvidia hardware with stock.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#287
$730B pre-money for a company where each model is roughly 2x profitable on its own, but each next model costs 10x the last. The whole thing only works if scaling keeps delivering. Research (Sara Hooker et al.) is not encouraging on that front, compact models already outperform massive predecessors on downstream tasks while scaling laws only predict pre-training loss reliably.

Wrote about both the per-model math and the scaling question:

(1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/ai-models-as-standalone-pls/

(2) https://philippdubach.com/posts/the-most-expensive-assumptio...

EDIT: Removed the dot after et; bc apparently it's an entire word (the more you know..)

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#288
post #242

IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part. From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI surviv…

The "circular investment" is mostly start up companies using their stocks instead of cash to pay for server hardware and cloud computing. There is a few extra steps in between that make things look weird and convoluted, but the end results is really just big companies giving hardware and getting shares of ai companies in exchange for it.

Nope wrong framing.

Nvidia is investing assets into OAI - it has to. Because OAI needs to become successful for Nvidia's story in the long-term to play out, to justify its current stock price.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#289

HN told me OpenAI was on the verge of collapse.

I've seen this sentiment (OpenAI collapse imminent) a lot on Youtube and Reddit, but it somehow evaded me on here Bad comments about OpenAI's long-term viability I've seen plenty here. But that's not the same as the people predicting one of the hottest companies right now will somehow suddenly run out of cash all on its own

Its hottest service by far is completely free, the vast majority of users of its free service aren't converting to users of its paid services (and often stop using the free service too because they were just tourists seeing what all the fuss was about, or they were compelled to use the free service by their employer), and its data center plans are an impossible money pit.

The fact it's become a household name internationally (giving it the appearance of success) can't save it from spending dramatically more money than it makes. It's been coasting on investments, but it's not even close to being actually profitable.

Huge or well-known companies have collapsed before, even though - because people become so used to them existing - it never quite feels like it will actually happen until it does.

Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation

#290
post #284

IMO this looks largely like another circular investment. Amazon's investment is tied to OpenAI using AWS for their Frontier product and I assume Nvidia's conditions are that OpenAI continue buying hardware from them. Then there's SoftBank though given that those are the same guys that invested heavily in WeWork, I assume this is just very brash bullishness on their part. From my perspective, I hope that OpenAI surviv…

Comparing OpenAI and WeWork is a nonsensical perspective. OpenAI is shipping the most revolutionary product in a generation, with 800 million monthly active users. It's the fastest revenue ramp ever, at incredible scale -- $20B+ ARR. These are real fundamentals. They matter. And the cost of inference is coming down all the time. WeWork was a short-term/long-term lease arbitrage business. The two are nothing alike.

It’s one of the worst takes I’ve heard. OpenAI creates the fastest growing app ever, spawns a revolution bigger than the internet, and this guys take is they are like WeWork…
Post reply on HN