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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

#331

Post by SR2Z »

com2kid wrote: post #259
SR2Z wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 manufa…

> Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff. We assemble. The actual parts are largely made overseas. Because location matters, assemblers in China are able to do better work at a much lower price, see every Chinese EV company, or Chinese drone companies. Heck in China you can buy a competent Chinese EV motorscooter for less than a kids bicycle in America.

> We assemble. The actual parts are largely made overseas.

It really depends on the product and the supply chains involved. Lots of parts make trips through multiple countries, and even the US multiple times.

But yes, I agree that agglomeration matters a ton.

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

#333

Post by johnnienaked »

tim333 wrote: post #275
andy99 wrote: post #172

IPO is to leave someone holding the bag, right? The narrative has really changed from AGI, the most consequential technology, blabla. If I had that I would keep it private. If I wanted to cash out, I’d do an IPO. Is there a narrative that doesn’t make it seem like pump and dump?

I was watching the OpenAI livestream yesterday. Sam was saying they have a $1.4 tn financial obligation to build 30 GW worth of data centers https://youtu.be/ngDCxlZcecw?t=1179 That's a lot of money to raise given they have no earnings. He also says they are talking about being able to build 1 GW a week at a cost of $20bn/GW I find it all a bit worrying. Weren't we supposed to be careful with energy use to reduce CO2…

[flagged]

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

#334

Post by rendaw »

overfeed wrote: post #232
johnrob wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am understanding things correctly, OpenAI could leave in the future - but CA can’t retroactively block the conversion in that case.

California is home to 1 in 8 Americans, and likely a much higher fraction of AI researchers, users and partner organizations to OpenAI (like Nvidia). The California AG has plenty of leverage beyond blocking/reversing the conversion. What leverage will OpenAI have after "leaving"[1] the California? 1. They're guaranteed to have an engineering office in the SF Bay. Not many of those folk will agree to relocate to Texas…

What's stopping OpenAI from offering telework? AI isn't dealing with high security or particularly sensitive data (that developers need to actively access - training data is all public or stolen works) and it's not a hardware product.

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

#335

Post by int_19h »

antognini wrote: post #246
int_19h wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall "everyone" rooting for him when OpenAI board tried to kick him out. Not even on HN.

Around 95% of the OpenAI engineers signed a letter to the board threatening to quit unless he was reinstated.

Of course they did, they all stood to immensely profit from his course of actions.

But OP talked about "people here".

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

#336

Post by hyperadvanced »

Jackpillar wrote: post #279
overfeed wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is home to 1 in 8 Americans, and likely a much higher fraction of AI researchers, users and partner organizations to OpenAI (like Nvidia). The California AG has plenty of leverage beyond blocking/reversing the conversion. What leverage will OpenAI have after "leaving"[1] the California? 1. They're guaranteed to have an engineering office in the SF Bay. Not many of those folk will agree to relocate to Texas…

Yup the Tesla treatment. Can change HQ's all you want but the main engineering work, brains, and talent will be at a HQ in California no matter what. Sam will probably do this for brownie points with the current administration, it will be politicized news for a cycle, but after the dust settles the majority of non-admin people will still be working unchanged out of CA.

That’s assuming Altman is sincerely going to keep trying to develop “AGI” and not try to turn OpenAI into a profitable business. You don’t need AI researchers if you get good enough video generation and pornbots to become immortally wealthy and say fuck the rest. If this is the case, OpenAI could be a completely done product, all that’s left to do is stop spending so much money on SG&A and get those revenue streams cranking.

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

#337

Post by wubrr »

SR2Z wrote: post #330
wubrr wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not at the same level as other large frontier models from American companies Cool story > The value of goods manufactured in the US has never been higher... Manufacturing has disappeared as a share of GDP, but that's not because we make less stuff. You're seriously going to try to argue how US manufacturing (which was the greatest share of global manufacturing by far) didn't decline, to support a point about h…

> Cool story I am not going to link you benchmarks or revenue numbers. You can find those yourself, if you actually care about being right. > It's funny that you don't see the contradiction. For the record, US manufacturing as a share of global manufacturing has significantly declined over the years. [0][1] Yes, because China is _cheap_ and _dense_ and has a billion newly-minted middle-class members. Do you expect th…

> Yes, that makes it nearly impossible for other places to become Shenzen. Even within China it's special.

You're skipping n = 1 and jumping straight to k. How did modern Shenzen become what it is? Through specific reasons like infrastructure investment, or because it was always a 'manufacturing cluster'? By your logic Shenzen must have been the manufacturing hub of the world since before the dawn of time... since it's 'impossible for any place to become Shenzen'.

> Right, because if you're doing business you can get by with a single investor meeting a year, right?

Because the only way to meet and communicate in 2025 is in person?

> There's no downside in time lost, money spent, ease of access, etc.?

All of these are better remote/digitally in most cases.

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

#338

Post by okdood64 »

standardUser wrote: post #191
terminalshort wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a little easier than that, though, because there are no supply chains involved (other than for the data centers, but those are already not in SF). Why else would the CA government be worried?

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.

> There's books written

Which?

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

#339

Post by okdood64 »

gsibble wrote: post #296
tim333 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was watching the OpenAI livestream yesterday. Sam was saying they have a $1.4 tn financial obligation to build 30 GW worth of data centers https://youtu.be/ngDCxlZcecw?t=1179 That's a lot of money to raise given they have no earnings. He also says they are talking about being able to build 1 GW a week at a cost of $20bn/GW I find it all a bit worrying. Weren't we supposed to be careful with energy use to reduce CO2…

You didn't notice as soon as energy was needed for AI, all the tech companies gave up on green power and reducing emissions?

Nuclear doesn't reduce emissions?

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

#340

Post by Annatar01 »

okdood64 wrote: post #339
gsibble wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't notice as soon as energy was needed for AI, all the tech companies gave up on green power and reducing emissions?

Nuclear doesn't reduce emissions?

It does, but its partly just the hot thing because you can increase energy usage without going back on CO2 promises.

They certainly arent reducing energy usage rn which could theoretically be a puzzle piece of reducing CO2.

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