OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#501

Post by ltbarcly3 » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 8:16 PM UTC

nsingh2 wrote: post #146

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #30

They have to focus on the distant future (where they are frankly unlikely to exist) because they are falling further and further behind in the immediate future. Their latest desperate bid for relevance is a plugin for Claude Code that uses Codex as a second opinion. Please clap.

This a big exaggeration. Codex is probably one of the top two LLM programming tools, along with Claude Code. GPT-5.4 models are strong, unlike the initial GPT-5 ones, which were comparatively bad, and can hold up against Opus 4.6. In my experience, they are better at analytical work. I cannot really see how they are "far behind," or how some plugin for Claude Code is a "last desperate bid." The tools are close enough…

They were years ahead. They managed to generate competitors (Anthropic is OpenAI refugees) by alienating their own employees by being so dishonest and immoral when compared to their own founding principals and even legal documents. They experienced a coup where the primary technical vision of the company was forced out in favor of someone who is comparatively a nontechnical dummy. That was the beginning of the multiple years of stagnation while they burned tens and hundreds of billions of dollars while their competitors caught up and then passed them by.

OpenAI is floundering and can't sustain their own burn rate. Their competitors are thriving. This is a market and technology that OpenAI largely created and just a few years in they are behind, losing unprecedented amounts of money, and have no clear path to catch up.

Lets be totally clear, they were 3 years ahead 3 years ago and now they are behind. They are literally standing still.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#502

Post by efreak » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

yanhangyhy wrote: post #321

Rohansi wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a browser or like a browser? I've never actually used it but from what I understand WeChat's mini programs are like web apps but not something you can open up in a typical browser. Alternatively, you could say browsers are the original super app.

its a super app. I think the core issue isn’t what underlying technology is used, but rather the service providers. They package their services into mobile apps or WeChat mini programs, and restrict functionality on browsers. For many ordinary people, this provides convenience, but for those who care more about privacy, it’s quite problematic. WeChat in China covers almost every aspect of life. Even someone like me,…

Medium is not one of the largest content providers anywhere, in any form that I'm aware of. There's no users sharing and reposting (arguably one of the drivers of network effects in modern social networking), no PSA, no apps or third-party extensibility, no taking over third party platforms in unrelated areas.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#503

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

chronc6393 wrote: post #371

manquer wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diluting the index entry rules, only devalues the index utility. When it becomes a bigger problem, other indices with higher quality controls will out compete the current ones and be used by asset managers seeking safety. More likely than not, most of us are already holding stock in these companies one way or another. All the Mag 7 hold a major chunk of OAI and Anthropic stock anyway, slower entry does not make it le…

> When it becomes a bigger problem, other indices with higher quality controls will out compete the current ones and be used by asset managers seeking safety Doubt it. The world does not allow perfect competition.

> world does not allow perfect competition

What does this have to do with anything?

Plenty of asset managers construct indices to save fees.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#504

Post by YetAnotherNick » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #131

aurareturn wrote: post #58

$2b/month which is $24b/year. Not as much as I expected considering they were at $20b by end of 2025.[0] They only added $4b since? Anthropic had $19b by end of February 2026 and they added $6b in February alone.[1] This means if they added another $6b in March, they're higher than OpenAI already. However, I heard that OpenAI and Anthropic report revenue in a different way. OpenAI takes 20% of revenue from Azure sale…

30x revenues at 17% revenue growth is... aggressive.

> 17% revenue growth

I think ads is going to massively change this number.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#505

Post by daemin » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 11:23 PM UTC

citizenpaul wrote: post #378

natas wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a year or two, and apple or any other hardware will have unified memory OR AMD will have a good offering to run all that stuff locally. It won't be as good as Claude, but it'll do for 90% of the things. It will be expensive as first, just like the first mainframes, then give it another 5 years or so, and it'll be affordable.

I'd argue this has already happened. The highest end mac pro is $10k and down from there. We might be returning to the appliance business model. Its just a matter of Productizing the software to plug and play light office admin work.

People that do light office work tend to have light office machines, which are very unlikely to have powerful NPUs or even a lot of RAM. Therefore with this minimal setup is it even feasible to do any sort of LLM based work locally on those machines, or will they all be dumb terminals connecting to hosted LLMs of the big companies?

This is also what I wonder, what practical applications can you actually do locally on something like a minimum spec NPU?

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#506

Post by ajam1507 » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 11:58 PM UTC

avaer wrote: post #28

This announcement completes the betrayal of their founding principles. "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." - Not advancing digital intelligence - While locking people into a superapp - Because they are further constrained to generating financial returns

That was before they knew AI needed a bunch of money.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#507

Post by BadCookie » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 12:10 AM UTC

woah wrote: post #331

nine_k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is reality-distortion field rivaling that of Jobs', and a crisis of faith. Nobody apparently believes that capital is worth investing into anything but AI.

OpenAI is making $24b a year. It's a 32x revenue multiple. High, but not insane. Spinning this as a story of overinvestment doesn't make sense.

32x earnings is high. 32x revenue is probably insane.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#508

Post by voganmother42 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 12:22 AM UTC

parineum wrote: post #497

maronato wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caitlin Kalinowski and other OpenAI employees resigned because of it [1]. ChatGPT uninstalls rose by 295%, downloads fell 13% on day one and a further 5% the next day [2]. One-star reviews spiked 775% overnight, then doubled again the following day [2]. 1.5 million users joined the QuitGPT boycott within days [1]. Claude rose to #1 most downloaded app in the App Store and US usage rose by 51% [2]. New customers are n…

I'm aware that it happened. You seem under the impression that this is some kind of mass exodus based on people you know. Uninstalls up 300%! What's the baseline? > downloads fell 13% on day one and a further 5% the next day Dramatic falloff of new downloads after one day (still plenty of new downloads). Day 3 was likely negligible and, I bet, it was back to normal less than a week after when the story left the news…

Ahh I see, you possess the superior bubble, how silly of me!

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#509

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

BitsAndObjects wrote: post #118

rpdillon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's primarily a function of the time for adoption, though, not the utility of the technology. In 20 years, people would not be able to so easily say that they could turn off AI with no impact.

That..what..no. The question was whether there are any comparable to electricity, of which I have put forth a number of examples. And also offered my opinion that it is too early to judge whether AI will be as significant or not. There are loads of technologies that, despite being decades old, do not qualify. So, no, it’s not “primarily a function of time”. It absolutely is about the utility. We can only be in a posi…

Sure. I'm just more optimistic than you are about the enduring value of AI. Time will tell.

Re: OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation

#510

Post by Gagarin1917 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 1:36 AM UTC

MinimalAction wrote: post #474

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alphabet is worth $3.5 Trillion. What’s their moat?

Much more than Google search. Cloud, Waymo, Verily, Deepmind, stake in Claude. So many bets other than just ads.

None of those are moats, though. None of it is “something competition cannot do.”

The concept of moats just has too much weight put on it around here.