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OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

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Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#371

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

ismailmaj wrote: post #275
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think NVIDIA is a bad bet--where is their moat in the long term? Doesn't the sort of work NVIDIA engineers do look vulnerable to AI-assisted automation? NVIDIA engineers code against a well-defined test suite/specification, right?

Their moat is cuda and cuda libraries and everything built on top. When a new architecture drops, it's always PyTorch running on CUDA, other PyTorch backends are best effort, even if they reach feature parity, many industry power users went closer to the metal to squeeze performance and that stuff is too specific to Nvidia stuff. if there is something that will beat Nvidia, it won't be something reaching feature pari…

> Their moat is cuda and cuda libraries and everything built on top

Sure, but to state the obvious that is only a factor for people using CUDA !

There are also whole segments of the AI market, like Google using TPUs, Amazon using Trainium chips where CUDA is irrelevant.

If the AI boom is really going to happen, then inference volume needs ramp up and dominate training costs, and the winners are going to be whoever can do inference the cheapest, which probably isn't going to be anyone paying the NVIDIA tax !

The benefit of CUDA is more for development, and the hyperscalers serving models that use CUDA APIs - bespoke business models. Anthropic currently support both CUDA and Trainium, and X.ai (who seem to be fizzling out) are CUDA, although there was some talk of Musk getting Samsung to make "AI chips" of some sort.

As far as AMD goes, I'm sure the developers at AMD's biggest sites - the exascale national labs - have a whole other level of support than consumers, and no doubt a toolset that works great for those fixed environments.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#372

Post by bigyabai »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #285
ismailmaj wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their moat is cuda and cuda libraries and everything built on top. When a new architecture drops, it's always PyTorch running on CUDA, other PyTorch backends are best effort, even if they reach feature parity, many industry power users went closer to the metal to squeeze performance and that stuff is too specific to Nvidia stuff. if there is something that will beat Nvidia, it won't be something reaching feature pari…

I don't understand why AMD can't offer a drop-in replacement for cuda which implements an identical API. How much actual diversity is there among standard AI workloads? I would expect this is an 80/20 thing where 80% of the workload uses 20% of the features. >Nvidia could just reduce their margins Commoditization is great for stock prices ;-)

> I don't understand why AMD can't offer a drop-in replacement for cuda which implements an identical API.

AMD, Apple and Intel all sell raster GPUs. Their GPU architecture is not optimized for general-purpose compute, and reorienting around that goal would create a "Fifteen Competing Standards" scenario pretty quickly. It's as much of a hardware issue as it is a software one, and none of these businesses like to cooperate (see: the last 15 years of Khronos drama).

In AMD's case, they don't see a need to sell consumer GPUs with a true CUDA analog since their datacenter product is architecturally distinct from their GPUs. Consumers come to AMD for cheap graphics performance, and adding additional hardware on top of the SMs would be a waste of money for many (or most) customers. This is why you see such a rift between CDNA and RDNA chips on compute workloads, and why it's unlikely that we'll see a CUDA-equivalent product out of AMD any time soon.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#373

Post by bigyabai »

romanovcode wrote: post #216
chvid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Two simple boring bets on AI: NVIDIA and Google.

I have a suspicion that when China will roll out their NVIDIA capable chips - and that is a question of when, not if - NVIDIA stock will plummet as it is heavily overvalued atm.

> and that is a question of when, not if

Well yes. People have said this since at least 2012, and we're still waiting for a CUDA-killer in 2026.

Chinese fabs can't import cutting-edge silicon, and they can't manufacture EUVL at scale either. I have no reservations concerning China's ability to innovate, but the blockers are enormous and have succeeded in preventing China from accessing the true HPC market for over a decade now.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#374

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

ismailmaj wrote: post #296
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why AMD can't offer a drop-in replacement for cuda which implements an identical API. How much actual diversity is there among standard AI workloads? I would expect this is an 80/20 thing where 80% of the workload uses 20% of the features. >Nvidia could just reduce their margins Commoditization is great for stock prices ;-)

3 things, they can, there is a precedent for that with Google v. Oracle for Java, and they have something! AMD engineered something called HIP which is CUDA API compatible libraries that targets AMD's hardware, it's the closest thing we have for drop-in replacement to Nvidia's software moat. It works for simple stuff but loses terribly for frontier kernels (like Flash Attention 3), novel approaches (e.g. Mamba) or ne…

I think AMD have essentially given up on the consumer / small scale GPU compute market, while being extremely successful selling their AI chips to much bigger customers. Some of the biggest supercomputers (clusters) in the world, such as the Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge exascale computers, are AMD Instinct based, but the tools and level of support they get is not going to be the same as someone at home trying to get ROCm running on their gaming card.

I wonder how big the market is for consumer/etc vs these massive installations?

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#375

Post by bigyabai »

ReptileMan wrote: post #319
chvid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Two simple boring bets on AI: NVIDIA and Google.

I think that NVIDIA is quite risky. I still don't understand what is their moat. There is nothing in their hardware to make them irreplaceable.

A lot of people don't get it. Nvidia won because they embraced standards, in a time when alternatives like OpenCL were outright sabotaged by AMD, Intel and Apple.

While Khronos struggled to get their vendors on the same page, Nvidia didn't. CUDA GPUs ship with clearly-defined support windows, Compute Capabilities, hardware documentation, PTX support, datacenter drivers, Linux/UNIX support, portable libraries, synergistic desktop products and capable edge SOCs. All of them walk in lockstep and typically dominate performance-per-watt comparisons against similar products. It's a lineup that's hard to surmount.

You can bet against Nvidia, but you'd better put your money on a fast horse. None of the big OEMs are taking CUDA seriously, and the bet against industry-wide cooperation is paying dividends that will be hard to justify competing with.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#376

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

pjc50 wrote: post #253
zipy124 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P/E is not an indicator of available to deployed capital. Just in the EU alone there is about €12 trillion in bank deposits which could be invested. There is no lack of liquid capital to be invested.

Basel capital rules are supposed to mitigate against the insane idea of banks deploying all their capital in a single high risk stock. If you think you can get all the _public_ to pull their short term bank deposits into stock .. well, (a) you've not met the Germans, and (b) that is how the economy of Albania collapsed in a pyramid scheme.

> Basel capital rules are supposed to mitigate against the insane idea of banks deploying all their capital in a single high risk stock.

At the same time of these companies IPO'ing, they are also trying to bend the rules of the index funds and their markets (Nasdaq,S&P 500) so that they can get listed into these index funds asap.

And when these happens at such obscene levels, what happens is that a very sizable chunk of the S&P will get into these companies (5-10% is a very large number for a single company especially such companies within these index funds IMO)

and their whole plan is that then banks and other investments sitting on cash would then invest in it. Oh by the way, your retirement funds might also be linked to it all.

The fact is that there is a race with multiple companies (SpaceX,Anthropic,OpenAI) all trying to IPO and get listed on the stock markets as soon as possible.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#377

Post by psvv »

zozbot234 wrote: post #358
psvv wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean, can you help me understand? Do you mean if free float goes from 5% to 100%, and weighting goes from 25% to 100%, it's more "extra supply" than "extra demand"? That's a good point I hadn't considered. I'm not sure the details of the lock-up period though, it might be staggered. So if it goes from 5% float to 50% float, that's 45% of additional shares available to buy, but an addition 75% of the…

If free float is 19%, the firm is being weighted at 95% of its market cap, which is 5x the float. If free float is 21%, the firm is weighted at 100%, which is less than 5x the float (that would be 105%). The transition from "5x the float" to "market cap" doesn't increase the weighting any more than the change in float would.

Yes, that's a good point. It doesn't need to cross the 20% to trigger a larger weighting -- it will smoothly increase at a 5:1 ratio below that.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#378

Post by darkwizard42 »

ololobus wrote: post #360

Just speculating and thinking out loud. I think this might be a good news for AI-skeptics. Going with IPO means that investors finally want to get some cash that they cannot get by any other means. There are good examples of private market companies staying like that for many years because they are profitable, they have plenty of cash, and they have a queue of investors eager to put more cash So what does it mean in…

I'm not sure how you drew the conclusion they don't think it will be profitable soon or an AI ceiling.

The only thing we can realistically glean from IPO is the need for more funds which are not able to be provided by private markets on the terms a private lender/investor may want.

Insiders will profit from this liquidity event, but I suspect the earliest investors will stay put only liquidating enough to make their funds look great while still keeping an eye on the future growth.

Re: OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

#380

Post by mrandish »

wg0 wrote: post #99

If you're an investor you should try Deepseekv4 before you put your hard earned money in this gambling spree. Context - Deepseekv4 is freely available to download you can host your own and sell it keeping the proceeds and it rivals Claude Opus 4.7. "Thank you for your attention to this matter"

Ironically, for-profit Chinese companies have released far more Open AI than OpenAI. And they may be a key reason the for-profit OpenAI remains non-profitable.

It's worth noting I suspect a key reason Chinese companies are doing this is, in part, tacit encouragement and logistical enablement from the Chinese government. Playing spoiler by nerfing the valuations of over-inflated U.S. AI leaders is a decent strategy given the current GPU disparity.

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