OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Tens of Billions at About $750 Billion Valuation
- Reference: 0180417673
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/18/184239/openai-has-discussed-raising-tens-of-billions-at-about-750-billion-valuation
- Source link:
> OpenAI has held preliminary talks with some investors about raising funds [1]at a valuation of around $750 billion , the Information reported on Wednesday. The ChatGPT maker could raise as much as $100 billion, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the discussions. If finalized, the talks would represent a roughly 50% jump from OpenAI's [2]reported $500 billion valuation in October , following a deal in which current and former employees sold about $6.6 billion worth of shares.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-discussed-raising-tens-billions-002741310.html
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/03/2120259/openai-becomes-worlds-most-valuable-startup-after-500-billion-valuation
This is what happens (Score:2)
When you ask a LLM to value itself...
Re: This is what happens (Score:2)
What if all the investors are using LLMs too?
Wut (Score:5, Insightful)
JP Morgan has a market cap of $800b something, because they bring in $166b in revenue and net $58b. Exxon Mobil has a market cap of not quite $500b, yet they bring in $340b a year. What did OpenAI bring in, $4b in 2024 and an expected $20b in revenue in 2025 (according to a quick search)? Where are they getting this valuation from? Imagine the Shark Tank cast evaluating this, Kevin Oleary would probably be flabbergasted.
Re: Wut (Score:2)
Did you just tell us you lost money shorting Tesla, without telling us you lost money shorting Tesla?
Re: (Score:2)
Valuations are imaginary numbers.
Let's say you raise $1M in a round of financing. But to do that, you sold 10% of the company. The valuation you just had is $10M - you sold 10% and got $1M.
That's the imaginary math going on.
The $1B unicorn valuations are exactly the same - if you raise say, $10M with 1%, that's $1B (1% of $1B is $10M)..
A strange contrast (Score:4, Insightful)
Real, significant and rapid progress is being made in developing AI tech
The hype-driven investment frenzy seems totally irrational
An International AI Boycott Would be Interesting (Score:3)
Part of AI revenue and brainshare gathering is from the public, doing political videos and less harmful cat videos. Perhaps if people were educated to the dangerous aspects of AI, as implemented, perhaps they could try not to contribute to pollution of humanity's knowledge-base, and the destruction of people's livelihoods.
Re: (Score:1)
The danger isn't the Weighted Random Word Generation machine. That's not the skynet that will kill us all. The danger is peoples' TRUST in the "AI" oracle god without understanding it's literally just randomly putting words together after years of training by cube farms filled with actual human beings clicking on the generations that sound least retarded for eight hours a day. People .. just don't understand what these things really are.
Re: An International AI Boycott Would be Interesti (Score:2)
Have you considered that the AI Derangement System that afflicts you is more dangerous than AI?
Re: (Score:2)
______ Derangement Syndrome = "I can't defend my illogical position, so I'll question the motives of the critic"
Re: An International AI Boycott Would be Interest (Score:2)
"it's literally just randomly putting words together after years of training by cube farms filled with actual human beings clicking on the generations that sound least retarded for eight hours a day."
Why leave out the ground-breaking attention mechanism, unless you don't understand LLM architecture?
Imagine what we could do with that money (Score:2)
If it wasn't all being devoted to the singular purpose of eliminating wages.
Remember the problem AI is designed to solve is paying wages.
Did you notice how expensive beef is? Yes some of that is because of douopoly and monopolies. But a lot of it is because of drought. A lot of cattle had to be killed off and weren't replaced because there just wasn't enough water for them. Especially in Texas
Now we could be building giant desalinization plants with all this money but instead somebody has to lose
Re: (Score:2)
Well, in general that's what people vote for, at the ballot box and with their wallets.
Re: Imagine what we could do with that money (Score:2)
Why perpetuate the idea that money (and the stock market) is zero-sum?
You know OpenAI's increasing irrelev. is real when (Score:2)
Even Sam Altman can't save openAI with his Jedi Hype Master Skills when they keep falling futher and further behind. Google and Anthropic are presenting serious challenges and while OpenAI is still in the top 10, the rest of the pack is quickly catching up, whatever secret sauce they had before, it has been discovered and they have yet to find something uniquely defining that nobody else has. Raise after raise eventually isn't going to make much of a media splash and they'll lose their influence there, too.
So following OpenAI's past strategy.. (Score:2)
They are giving money to investors to buy shares in the company?
- Can I have some?
Q:If they have money and think they'll make money. (Score:3)
Why would they IPO ?
A: The don't and they won't.
Dirty Sam Altman is fucked.
Re: (Score:2)
Simply raising money isn't a reason to go public. The reason to go public is fundamental capital flexibility, and allowing investors to flexibly cash in when they want.
The fact that OpenAI doesn't make money is only loosely related to why they would go public. Even if they did make loads of money there would still be good reason for investors (i.e. Microsoft) to request the company to go public. Specifically with a high evaluation now is a great time to cash in.
Re: (Score:2)
if they went public they'd have to use GAAP for all their financial statements. Given the billions in deals they have inked I'd be almost shocked if the accounting isnt on the creative side currently.
Harder to bilk^H^H^H^H^Hattact sophisticated investors when you can be accurately compared to your peers.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it go only go down from here.
Re: (Score:2)
How is this company worth a trillion $? I don't see many assets, significant IP, a strong competitive edge, or a model for monetization other than becoming an "AI AWS" The latter has some merit, if 1) a strong market for AI Cloud services emerges (and that means corporate clients, not generic chatbots), and 2) they manage to secure a corner on scarce supplies like memory and AI-capable chips.
Re: (Score:2)
> How is this company worth a trillion $?
Oh, that part is easy. If I sell you 1% of my company for $10 Billion dollars, the company is "valued" at $1 Trillion.
The last sale sets the stock price. The value is shares * price. When a company is not traded publicly, we can make the numbers whatever we want them to be.
It looks good on the balance sheets of the investor companies to own part of a high-value company, so they are willing to play along. Especially when the agreement is a circle-jerk of company-A investing in company-B so that company-A
Re: (Score:2)
er... I mixed up the A & B here... it should read:
"Especially when the agreement is a circle-jerk of company-B investing in company-A so that company-A can buy product/services from company-B."
Re: (Score:2)
openai knows they don't have the capital to compete and this looks like a desperation move. They are grasping at straws. I expect that they will be acquired by one of the big tech companies within a year or so.