Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?) • Hacker News Board

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#61

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC

gyomu wrote: post #16

pdpi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual content of the post is straightforward and not particularly novel — YC has a stake in OpenAI, that creates a conflict of interest, and the New Yorker is negligent (in the informal sense) for not putting that in their piece. It’s a sobering reminder and worthy of being on the front page on that basis alone, but I don’t see much of a discussion to be had. “Unusually quiet for a front page post” is probably w…

> not particularly novel As far as I know this is the first time anyone has publicly claimed to know, quoting insider sources, what YC's actual stake in OpenAI is.

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Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#62

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 05, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

tomhow wrote: post #26

globalnode wrote: post #22

i always thought there were two reasons for AI interest on HN. 1. since AI has captured the imagination of capitalists and they think this is the next industrial revolution, they gotta be in it to win it. combined with the fact that i believe most people here are wealthy or at least aspirationally so, that explained half of it. 2. the other half is that AI as a tech is interesting from a mathematical and compsci poin…

The only thing that should be surprising to anyone who knows about the early history of OpenAI is how little of it YC owns, given how much it leveraged YC’s credibility to get started (early employees joined an institution called “YC Research”, operating from YC’s office space). Once that stake is divided up among all the LPs and small unit holders, it’s not a huge outcome. Also: nothing gets sustained attention on H…

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Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#63

Post by financetechbro » Tue, May 05, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

ucyo wrote: post #57

Sam Altman was president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. of course YC has a stake in OpenAI. My surprise is why it is that low…

Every time they raise new $, old shareholders get diluted. OAI has raised a lot of money

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#64

Post by nozzlegear » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

benterix wrote: post #50

keybored wrote: post #37

News at Y Combinator used to be my preferred reading diversion: reading interesting technical stories, debates on political topics, learning things, my comfort food of the same topics repeating the same arguments over the span of a decade. Now it’s that but also 65% AI doomscrolling.

Same with me. I found a new hobby: reading pre-LLM HN. It turns out I missed so many interesting projects and discussions. Some are a bit funny in hindsight, some are inspiring. At the same time, the current version of HN is still usable, you just need to mentally filter LLM-related stuff. It was similar with cryptocurrencies TBH.

I just press the "Hide" button under most stories related to AI; it removes the temptation for me to jump into the thread, and surfaces more interesting (i.e. not AI bullshit) submissions.

You could probably automate it with a browser extension and a regex that looks for words like "AI", "LLM", and the names of any popular companies or projects.

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#65

Post by dgellow » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

ucyo wrote: post #57

Sam Altman was president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. of course YC has a stake in OpenAI. My surprise is why it is that low…

From what I see they had 13 founding rounds, that’s quite a lot of dilution to be expected if you were early

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#66

Post by dgellow » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

globalnode wrote: post #22

i always thought there were two reasons for AI interest on HN. 1. since AI has captured the imagination of capitalists and they think this is the next industrial revolution, they gotta be in it to win it. combined with the fact that i believe most people here are wealthy or at least aspirationally so, that explained half of it. 2. the other half is that AI as a tech is interesting from a mathematical and compsci poin…

Even if ycombinator doesn’t have ownership in OpenAI, they do have ownership in a lot of AI startups and would still be incentivized to spread AI news

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#67

Post by dgellow » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

geuis wrote: post #25

Could someone (non-AI) summarize this? I'm sorry but I just literally don't have time to even read long posts from very reputable sources. I know I need the info but time just isn't there in my life right now.

Just skip and ignore if you don’t have the time, you likely have more important things to do

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#68

Post by an0malous » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

globalnode wrote: post #22

i always thought there were two reasons for AI interest on HN. 1. since AI has captured the imagination of capitalists and they think this is the next industrial revolution, they gotta be in it to win it. combined with the fact that i believe most people here are wealthy or at least aspirationally so, that explained half of it. 2. the other half is that AI as a tech is interesting from a mathematical and compsci poin…

The interest in AI is global and spans nearly every corner of the Internet, it’s not something exclusive to HN. The root cause of this is #1 by a wide margin. Our society is governed by money, the investor class sees an opportunity to become trillionaires, the labor class is afraid of becoming the permanent underclass, all of these things are defined by money.

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#69

Post by aurareturn » Tue, May 05, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

globalnode wrote: post #22

i always thought there were two reasons for AI interest on HN. 1. since AI has captured the imagination of capitalists and they think this is the next industrial revolution, they gotta be in it to win it. combined with the fact that i believe most people here are wealthy or at least aspirationally so, that explained half of it. 2. the other half is that AI as a tech is interesting from a mathematical and compsci poin…

I'll present an alternative set of reasons:

1. AI is tremendously useful at the current intelligence level and people here like to be more productive.

2. AI is exciting - both in the potential applications and new models getting smarter.

3. Many workers here have either transitioned to building agents or they're heavily using AI for their work.

Re: Y Combinator's Stake in OpenAI (0.6%?)

#70

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:21 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #58

giancarlostoro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the trick right? What do they really mean by AGI. Depending on how narrow you go, it sounds like we've already achieved it. However, if they keep saying they'll achieve it and not defining it before making such statements that determine what it is, they can keep saying it endlessly to create hype. One key thing I've heard about AGI which I think would be the most determining factor for me is a model that learn…

I think they would not be LLMs then.

Agreed. It feels like LLMs are just a piece of the whole final solution towards AGI. I do foresee possibly seeing "LLM flavored AGI" where it does all those things, via tool calling, RAG and other techniques. The real AGI in my eyes will be more than just an LLM though.