OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#321

Post by scarface_74 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 2:59 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #158

nwiswell wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. This is pretty much obvious just from the valuations. The wild bull case where they invent a revolutionary superintelligence would clearly value them in the trillions, so the fact that they're presently valued an order of magnitude less implies that it is viewed as an unlikely scenario (and reasonably so, in my opinion).

You don't need science fiction to find the bull case for OpenAI. You just have to think it stands to be the "next" Google, which feels increasingly plausible. Google's current market capitalization is in the trillions.

Besides name recognition, what’s special about OpenAI at this point?

I was prototyping some ideas with ChatGPT that I wanted to integrate into a MVP. It basically involved converting a users query into a well categorized JSON object for processing downstream. I took the same prompt verbatim and used it with an Amazon Bedrock hosted Anthropic model.

It worked just as well. I’m sure there will be plenty of “good enough” models that are just as good as Open AI’s models.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#322

Post by danielmarkbruce » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:07 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #318

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are approximately true. But, anything software has some accounting for things (like training a model) that really should be categorized as capex instead of opex and it distorts the numbers.

My understanding was that total revenue was an order of magnitude lower, in the multi-millions.

No, it's reported to be at a run rate of $4 bill pa.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#323

Post by sub7 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:13 AM UTC

Funny that they will call syntactically correct word vectors trained on reddit comments "AGI". There is no "self learning", just chaining outputs trained on different .txt instruction sets.

There has never been a better time to have human intelligence and apply it to fields that are moving towards making critical decisions based on latent space probability maps.

NLP and Human-Computer Interaction however are fields that have actually been revolutionized though this wave so I do expect at least much better voice interfaces/suggestion engines.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#324

Post by Nathanael_M » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:17 AM UTC

changing1999 wrote: post #274

Nathanael_M wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an arms race, then, no? Whichever company can survive the burn can sit on their LLaurels and recoup?

That's the thing, nothing points to a world with a single winner in AI models. I get what you are saying, but not sure OpenAI can survive the burn unless they build an unmatchable AGI. And that's pure speculation at this point.

I mean, someone needs to rise to the top, unless society as a whole just says "There's no value here." and frankly there's too much real value right now for that. So someone's surviving, at least at the service level. Maybe they just end up building off of open source models, but I can't see how the best brains in the business don't find a way to get paid to make these models. Am I missing something?

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#325

Post by heroprotagonist » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:23 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #100

$6.6B raise. The company loses $5B per year. So all this money literally gives them just an extra ~year and change of runway. I know the AI hype is sky high at the moment (hence the crazy valuation), but if they don't make the numbers make sense soon then I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. Another interesting part: > Under the terms of the new investment round, OpenAI has two years to transform into a for-pro…

My hope is that they verge failure in 2 years, then turn to a non-profit. This in turn gets subsidized by DARPA, who by then realize they're WAY behind the curve on AI and the investment is helpful towards keeping the US competitive in the race to AGI that many believe to be a 'first to the goal wins forever' scenario. And the contingency for this prop-up? OpenAI have to actually be 'open' to receive the money.

Inevitably this will result in this one company's eventual decline but it'll push everyone else in the space forward.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#326

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:26 AM UTC

bionhoward wrote: post #182

itsoktocry wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see things ending well for OpenAI. I mean, what exactly do you see happening? The have a product people love and practically incalculable upside potential. They may or may not end up the winners, but I see no scenario in which it "doesn't end well". It's already "well", even if the company went defunct tomorrow. > that clause with that timeline seems a bit risky. I'm 99% certain that OpenAI drove the terms…

the default answer is to love ChatGPT but be unable to use it because of the prohibition on competition. Who wants to chat with something that learns to imitate you and you can’t learn to imitate it back? Seems like everyone using ChatGPT is sleepwalking into economic devastation… also, for my use case I eventually found it’s faster and easier and less frustrating to write code myself (empowering) and not get sucked…

We already freely distribute entire revision histories with helpful notes explaining everything in the git history.

The git repo and review history for any large project is probably more helpful for training a model than anything, including people using the model to write code.

It sounds like you are happy to not use LLMs. I’m the opposite way; code is a means to an end. If an LLM can help smooth the road to the end result, I’m happy to take the smooth road.

Refusing to learn the new tool won’t keep it from getting made. I really don’t think that code writers are going to influence it that much. The training data is already out there.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#327

Post by arjunaaqa » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:36 AM UTC

Seeing the discussions, I would point out that a startup needs stability in leadership to grow that fast.

Look at Google, Meta, etc.

They were super stable in leadership when they took off.

Can’t say the same for OpenAI.

Also, being an AI researcher, them converting to profit org after accepting donations in name of humanity and non-profit is honestly shameful and will not attract most talented researchers.

Similar to what happened to Microsoft once they got labelled as “evil”.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#328

Post by fumar » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:47 AM UTC

iepathos wrote: post #272

paxys wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a digital advertising company. OpenAI hasn't even entered the ads business. In the absolute best case they can take over a large chunk of Google's search market share, sure, but that still doesn't make it anything similar to Google in terms of finances. How do they start making the queries profitable? What do they do when their competitors (Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, Grok and several others) undercut t…

Ads are the most likely monetization path for openai. They want to capture as many users right now and can pull the trigger on ads whenever they want to start juicing users further. As long as the funding flows they can delay the ads. Google and Facebook were ad free initially for years only switching to it for monetization after building up critical user mass.

I would say they are likely already working through a potential ads experience

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#329

Post by kibibu » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 3:52 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #232

tptacek wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need science fiction to find the bull case for OpenAI. You just have to think it stands to be the "next" Google, which feels increasingly plausible. Google's current market capitalization is in the trillions.

Google is a digital advertising company. OpenAI hasn't even entered the ads business. In the absolute best case they can take over a large chunk of Google's search market share, sure, but that still doesn't make it anything similar to Google in terms of finances. How do they start making the queries profitable? What do they do when their competitors (Claude, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, Grok and several others) undercut t…

With slipping consumer standards around separating ads from real content, OpenAI are in a position to much more insidiously advertise than Google.

Re: OpenAI completes deal that values company at $157B

#330

Post by cryptonector » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 4:29 AM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #29

cs702 wrote: post #4

Given the high risk, investors likely want a shot of earning at least a 10x return. $157 billion x 10 = $1.57 trillion, greater than META's current market capitalization. Greater returns would require even more aggressive assumptions. For example, a 30x return would require OpenAI to become the world's most valuable company by a large margin. All I can say to the investors, with the best of hopes, is: Good luck! You'…

It's fine, Sam's bulletproof plan is to build AGI (how hard could it be) and then ask the AGI how they can make a return on their investments. https://www.threads.net/@nixcraft/post/C5vj0naNlEq If they haven't built AGI yet that just means you should give them more billions so they can build the AGI. You wouldn't want your earlier investments to go to waste, right?

Reminds me of Stanislav Lem's The Phools.