Is OpenAI giving employees RSUs? What good are those under these astronomical valuations?
they have PPUs
OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
291–300 of 620 posts
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
They wouldn’t have bought $100 worth of product if the deal weren’t offered, because they didn’t have $100 to spend.
If they couldn't borrow $100, or get $100 from any other investor, that just puts you in the position of being an investor, and even then the difference between bradfa's version and mine is simply when you became an investor, not that you became one. Again, this is not a cheat code: if you sell $80 of cost for $100 of stock, the stock you now own can go up or down, and if you overvalued it then down is the more likel…
The primary cheat code here would actually seem to be (a) getting preferential access to Nvidia's production through these deals and (b) creating a paper story of increasing OpenAI private valuation.
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#293IMO 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…
> 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…
The problem is here:
> Let's say I give you $100 on the condition that you buy $100 worth of product from me. And let's say that product cost me $80 to produce. Isn't that basically the same as me giving you $80?
Why limit myself to $100 for a product that costs $80? I could just as well give you $1 000 000 to buy this same product from me. That way, I have a $1 000 000 share of your company, and I have $1 000 000 in revenue, and it only cost me $80.
This distorts the market for the product we're trading, and distorts the share price for both my company and yours.
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#294IMO 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.
How will they make money on their product exactly? To the tune of being worth nearly a trillion dollars? There is no guarantee that inference will go down, we’ve seen some improvement with cheap models, but they aren’t what people want, and otherwise models stay expensive to run and use
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Aaaannd get to claim the 100 as revenue to show investors that the company is performing better than if I had not made the deal, which also means that demand for the product stays inflated which also means I can keep my margins higher by not needing to discount my product.
Urgently need an IPO so losers can chip in. If the sandcastle plummets before, funds and other AI companies lose a lot, so better bet again and again, even if this is nonsensical.
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#296> Amazon will start with an initial $15 billion investment, followed by another $35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met. Those conditions are an IPO or reaching AGI [1]. Nvidia and SofBank will pay in installments. Also very interesting that Microsoft decided to not invest in this round. A PR statement was made though [2]. [1] https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/02/26/amazon-to-invest... [2…
Very convenient to put "AGI" in all these agreements because the term is fundamentally undefinable. So throw out whatever numbers you want and fight about it and backtrack later.
The problem with AGI is not that it's undefinable, but that everyone has a different one. Kinda like consciousness in that regard.
Fortunately, OpenAI already wrote theirs down. Well, Microsoft[0] says they did, anyway. Some people claimed it was a secret only a few years ago, and since then LLMs have made it so much harder to tell the difference between leaks and hallucinated news saying this, but I can say there's at least a claim of a leak[1].
[0] https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/02/27/microsoft-and-op...
[1] It talks about it, but links to a paywalled site, so I still don't know what it is: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/microsoft-and-openai-have-...
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How will they make money on their product exactly? To the tune of being worth nearly a trillion dollars? There is no guarantee that inference will go down, we’ve seen some improvement with cheap models, but they aren’t what people want, and otherwise models stay expensive to run and use
Inference is already profitable (training is not)
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#298IMO 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.
The only reason to draw this comparison is to show SoftBank are not as competent as they'd like to appear to be - so putting their name in relation to investors of OAI does not strengthen the prospects we should share re. OAI.
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#299Puff puff until it pops!
Re: OpenAI raises $110B on $730B pre-money valuation
#300Hard not to hear the word “bailout” in my head when I see this many billions being tossed around.
At least investors like Amazon can afford to lose their investment ($50 billion). That would be like a normal person losing a few thousand dollars. It hurts, but life would go on.