I've wondered how many announced fundraising rounds were like this. It's in everyone's interest (VCs and entrepreneurs) if the message to the outside world is "this company is amazing so they've raised a boatload of cash". But VCs might not want to give it all up front, or unconditionally.

It makes it hard to say what the valuation of a company is. If the milestones are unlikely to be hit, then it's anyone's guess.

that being said, how can Softbank keep throwing around all these astronomical numbers after so many bad investments? Leftover iPhone money?

Having large funding rounds contingent on meeting milestones is common. Always has been.

Don't let reality get in the way of vibes

With NASDAQ and NYSE looking to reduce the timelines for new public companies to be included into indices (“fast entry” rule), I have a feeling that OpenAI and SpaceX and Anthropic are mostly looking to dump their inflated shares into the public’s retirement accounts by force.

Michael Burry called out this structural manipulation play recently:

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/03/51248353/michael...

It's also like... >$50 billion in compute credits and discounted hardware between Amazon/Microsoft/NVidia. Which is all inside baseball since they simultaneously juice their financials with OpenAI's cloud compute bill

Probably again cancelled or significantly reduced in the near future when all the current investors inevitably cash out.

Ok, let's switch to the HTML doc title above.

> No, they didn't raise $122B as the HN title implies.

What is this about? The title says "OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation". It does not mention $122B.

Edit: the linked page's title is different and indeed states $122B.

Seems like all of OpenAI's "deals" are announcement fodder with no real contract, primed to quietly fall through later.

"Here comes another bubble..."