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- Hacker News
- It's over. Open models and chinese models will make fast progress and that nvidia+ms 128gb monster is what everyone will end up buying. sama can go back to running scams.by sourcegrift
- > The A.I. company’s advisers are pushing its chief executive, Sam Altman, to move slowly after SpaceX’s stock has been volatile and as the start-up grapples with financial challenges.
Surely if your company isn't just blowing smoke then you have nothing to worry about. Or is this an admission that the insane valuation for these companies is currently just bullshit?
by dminik - > if your company isn't just blowing smoke then you have nothing to worry about
Not really. Plenty of solid companies have to wring their hands around IPO timing based on market conditions. Sometimes, this is due to valuation multiples. Sometimes it's due to fads, e.g. investors preferring capital-structure efficiency versus low leverage.
- They just want to see Anthropic crash first and then be the last survivor.by tempodox
- by bob1029
- > They just want to see Anthropic crash first and then be the last survivor.
I don't think so. There's only two real options here:
1. There's no bubble to pop
2. There's a bubble to pop
In the first case, the first AI company to IPO gets a ton of money from the market who wants to get in on this, and the second to IPO finds that there's not enough capital left in the public markets and has to sell for less than they'd wanted to.
In the second case, the fir5st to IPO gets money from their shares, which drop in value (bubble popping), adn the second to IPO gets absolutely nothing (bubble popped).
In both cases, the first to IPO gets the rewards, the second gets either less or nothing.
by lelanthran - If Anthropic tanks in the public markets, that will cause a revaluation of OpenAI in the private markets. If they delay IPO to try another private round, they also want to sign that round early.
Perhaps that's Anthropic's plan, is they believe OpenAI is weak. If the IPO is good they win. If it's bad OpenAI loses.
- > up from the company’s last private valuation of $730 million
typo
by babelfish - For now.. ;)by 4k0hz
- OpenAI is in deep trouble is what I am reading into thisby outside1234
- Why?by luisgvv
- I actually see this as an indicator that they still feel they can comfortably raise in the private market. If they tried to rush an IPO into an indifferent public market it would look worse, in my opinion. I'm not saying they're in great shape--they may be in terrible shape for all I know. But I think rushing the IPO would send a worse message than holding off.by combilabs
- “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” as the saying goes.
Maybe they will show major Ad revenue and Codex sales and get a higher price next year but it’s a risk.
by fsuts - They realised their numbers are much worse than anthropicsby Havoc
- You know anthropics numbers? They still haven’t filed either.by therobots927
- Maybe they want a Mythos level model first.by koolala
- Good news: GPT-5.6 has been export restricted.by wmf
- With all the uncertainty about AI regulation, I don't think now is the time.
How do you even value a company when we don't even know if GPT-6 will be made available to the general public?
by draginol - OpenAI and Anthropic valuations are based on the premise that they may develop AGI in the near future. How do you value a company based on that premise? Throwing regulations into the mix doesn't make the problem much harder than it already is.
- I’m not so sure the uncertainty around _regulation_ is the concern here.by hnarn
- AI exits in America probably have a political cliff approaching fast as populist backlash will hit them, or perhaps they see political winds favorable to regulatory capture in the future and are waiting for that?by int32_64
- > AI exits in America probably have a political cliff approaching fast as populist backlash will hit them
The populist backlash is coming for datacenters. I'm unconvinced that's truly problematic to these companies given data travels close to the speed of light and plenty of countries have energy, data interconnects and governments unresponsive to locals' concerns.
- Data centers are the next Dark Fiber from 2000. After VCs and private Equity fund them there will not be sufficient demand because AI will inevitably not entirely live up to all the hype. The fire sale will eventually begin. Then Google, M$, Apple and Amazon will buy them at a discount just like Google snatched up the dark fiber after 2000.
- The window has basically closed for them for the time being. The business math just isn’t there.
The best option at this point is kick the can down the road and hope market sentiment improves next year. Not much signal that it will, and quite a lot of signal the sentiment only declines, but pumping the brakes is the least worst option on the table.
by cmiles8 - They should have done it a year or two ago when the hype was strong.
Today everyone knows there's no agi coming up and it will be a very long time until they generate any profits, if ever.
by pier25 - There may never be another window. They will run out of money especially if open models catch up.by sschueller
- I doubt that anyone at OpenAI would let their payday decrease. If anything, they got assurances that everyone would keep the bubble going until 2028 no matter what.by arppacket
- > The business math just isn’t there.
What do you mean? I promise I'm not being facetious or satirical. I'm just too simple and conservative of an investor to understand this comment. (for example: Is the price-to-earnings ratio too high? I probably wouldn't want to invest in the business.)
by bellowsgulch - > window has basically closed for them for the time being. The business math just isn’t there
Unless Anthropic also cancels its IPO, this probably isn't it.
- Part of the issue is the respective positioning:
- OpenAI wants to be the consumer version of AI, modeled after Google and Meta, with a mostly free universal service powered by ads and e-commerce. They haven't fully shown that model can work. The big problem is the lack of zero marginal costs as each new user requires GPU spend.
- Anthropic positions itself more as enterprise AI, modeled after Microsoft ironically enough, and charges big companies for services. The economics of coding agents work but GPUs get expensive fast and open models are getting good enough for most use cases.
So it's a race between ads and e-commerce offsetting AI spend and open source eating almost everyone's lunch.
by light_triad