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- Hacker News
- This gives off major "we don’t trust our own product" energy. Actually, they tell exactly this. Matrix vibes, anyone? Also, unpopular opinion: The 4th movie isn’t as bad as people say.by exiguus
- It's the worst everby timedude
- Dumb question (I should just sit down and watch rest of the movies, I've only seen the first one): can you explain the "matrix vibes" you're referencing. Spoilers are fine.by emestifs
- I didnt even know there was a 4th movieby AznHisoka
- "I would say not 2026, yeah. We’ve got a lot of stuff to do."
Why is this even a "would say" kind of thing. Surely AGI - they've achieved it three times now, right? - has lead to a datacenter full of PhDs who will perfectly time the IPO.
by bananamogul - First they have to get the agents to stop trying to take over the world. That's got to be the first step, I feel like.by hackernud3s
- Time for Dario to walk the walkby himaraya
- Almost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5sdWOwH4rg (great track)by greenbanana
- Maybe this is a dumb take but I don't think they'll ever go public. Their company is so volatile and unsustainable in the long-term that I don't think it makes sense to go public at all.by sikozu
- They are constantly out of money, going public would be the dumbest move imaginable. They are unstable, not only financially, but in leadership.
- I mean, this seems fairly clear.
Either OpenAI fails, and goes nowhere.
Or it succeeds, in which case IPOing will be a quaint aspect of history.
People really aren't following through on what it means for any of these companies to succeed.
by fidotron - the only way they never go public is if they die quickly
edit: which I doubt btw. investors are going to want to dump the bags very soon
by willsmith72 - In its current state the economics of the company make little sense to me. The astronomical costs to execute a prompt versus the relatively tiny price tag to the customer smells like an Enron scandal to me except everyone knows it and we’ve accepted it. Wall street is less forgiving.
Isn’t one of the reasons to go public to raise capital? They seemed to be doing that just fine without the weight of the open market with extremely profitable companies like Nvidia funneling billions of dollars in.
- Their company is so volatile and unsustainable in the long-term that it makes sense to go public (for the current owners)by blitzar
- Is he planning on going public under human or AI governance ? The two timescales are converging. All we need is Super Duper AI and our financial issues will be over.
- The time to go public was about 16 months ago. People are waking up to large bills now, Chinese models are nipping at their heels, public sentiment has turned, money is becoming more expensive.
The market no longer cares about fundamentals, corporate structure, controls etc.
Too slow by my judgment.
by cco - I'm sure it's not because of the horrific state of their financials, no sirree!by sensanaty
- Do people seriously trust what this guy says anymore?by mbesto
- It doesnt matter if you trust them or not. I don't know why people get so hung up on this. Blind trust is for children and the only certain things in this world are death and taxes.
The point is that openAI is currently messaging against IPO in 2026. That is news by itself
- However bad anthropic’s financials look I’m sure OpenAI’s look even worseby m101
- Plus that lawsuit from Apple might go spectacularly wrong.by EA-3167
- Prices are moving inference to highly profitable, oAI seems to have solved their training problems, and they're currently competing nicely with Anthropic on the coding side. I'd wait, too -- why fight this stuff out in public when you can stay private and have your big competitor deal with all the public company concerns? There's plenty of capital available in the private markets for them right now.by vessenes
- > Prices are moving inference to highly profitable
I hate to wave the Wikipedian protester sign, but...
by dofm - Debt cost is high since some time, going public probably is just cheaper.
Anyway, any evidence for "prices are moving inference to highly profitable" because they are still selling $20 for $1 with their subscriptions.
by vb-8448 - Companies that plan to go public don't push back their IPO dates if things are going well. It's a universal sign that the finances aren't in order when a company pushes back its IPO multiple times.
OpenAI and Anthropic are barely profitable on a "unit" basis when ignoring the costs of marketing and other COSS expenses. They're definitely not profitable on an EBITDA or GAAP basis or they'd already have IPO'd.
by gamblor956 - Given that they paused signups for their 20x Max plan, your assessment seems overoptimistic.
Their new Broadcom chips seem cool, and they had a nice model release with Astra. But, that doesn't mean they've solved the profitability question during an era of rapidfire open-weight model releases, extreme memory shortages, and intense political pushback.
by nwah1 - I like Gaben's take on going public. This is a clip from a longer talk he gave which I think is really insightful into many aspects of the economics of software and company culture.by fasterik
- It's a great discussion, but not one that I think applies to AI startups. Valve's business model takes the traditional path where profit is generated by selling a product and growing from there. Modern Startups now take large sums of upfront funding, trading them for equity to hopefully reach profitability. Going public becomes a pressure from investors to recoup their cost, not a strategic move based on business needs. An unfortunate realityby fyredge