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OpenAI Is Preparing to File for an IPO Soon

156 pointsby louiereedersonyesterday at 4:24 PM347 commentsview on HN

https://archive.md/0Ez3C


Comments

ololobustoday at 4:21 PM

Just speculating and thinking out loud. I think this might be a good news for AI-skeptics. Going with IPO means that investors finally want to get some cash that they cannot get by any other means. There are good examples of private market companies staying like that for many years because they are profitable, they have plenty of cash, and they have a queue of investors eager to put more cash

So what does it mean in this particular case? The board and investors probably don’t see it being realistic to become profitable soon, and maybe even worry about AI ceiling, so they want to profit now

cdnstevetoday at 9:22 AM

Non profit files for IPO should be the headline.

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wg0today at 5:52 AM

If you're an investor you should try Deepseekv4 before you put your hard earned money in this gambling spree.

Context - Deepseekv4 is freely available to download you can host your own and sell it keeping the proceeds and it rivals Claude Opus 4.7.

"Thank you for your attention to this matter"

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swiftcodertoday at 4:12 PM

Hypothetically, isn't the whole upside here already priced into NVidia?

techtuatetoday at 5:44 AM

I was wrong - not investing in FB and Amazon many years ago - thought those businesses will shrivel and die. I believe OpenAI is a bit of a coin flip as the AI space evolves. In fact I feel all AI will be marginal return generators at best. There are a lot of incumbents and a lot more coming as barriers to entry get increasingly lower. Unless a company can build a near monopoly it'll be hard to justify a 100X revenue valuation despite heavy losses. I feel it's safer to take a punt on alternate compute companies (Musk leads but others exist) than take a bet on one of many AI companies to build a monopoly.

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sandeepkdtoday at 4:21 AM

Looks like there is only limited money in the market and there is a race to get it first. Wonder if the free market concept should move the prices down in such a scenario?

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henry2023today at 4:28 AM

Soon to be part of your portfolio if you hold Nasdaq 100 or S&P 500 trackers line QQQ or SPY.

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HDBaseTtoday at 5:05 AM

I can't wait to invest an OpenAI and lose all my retirement fund.

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avaertoday at 4:07 AM

A race to lock in the money next to SpaceX (which just filed an S-1)? This can't go well.

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Aboutplantsyesterday at 5:29 PM

The summer of Trillion dollar IPO’s is upon us. OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX

Will they eat each others potential capital appetite? Or is there just that much laying around for them all to gobble up the bag?

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wbsuntoday at 3:10 PM

5 trillion IPO of three companies this year! They still need real money to buy the offered stocks, I am wondering which markets will be sold in order for investors to get the cash.

amusingimpala75yesterday at 5:55 PM

Are we not going to talk about the literal CFO saying their books aren’t up to rigorous reporting standards and need to wait until 2027?

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amusingimpala75today at 4:22 AM

How does a company even consider this while the CFO is privately saying the books / revenue accounting are not ready for public scrutiny?

Edit: Or has so much somehow changed in two weeks that it’s no longer necessary to wait until next year?

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HeartStringstoday at 3:54 PM

Time to dump on the npcs

bandramitoday at 5:04 AM

Cool does this mean they'll disclose their revenues and expenses in line with GAAP?

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paol_tajayesterday at 5:55 PM

The funniest possible outcome is OpenAI going public and then having to explain to shareholders that the path to AGI requires losing more money than previously expected, but with greater confidence.

bensyversonyesterday at 5:28 PM

Let's hope—and I say this with zero sarcasm—that their relationship to Wall Street is cruel indifference.

chrisss395today at 3:15 PM

How many retail investors plan to buy? The folks I hear most excited about this have equity from the startup/PE companies they were involved in and are treating it like a big future payday. Apparently there is a big Whatsapp chat for them to discuss it all.

My recollection is that retail investors end up losing in these situations. I'm personally staying away...feels too much like a grift, but I won't pretend I have some magical analysis to prove it.

noobermintoday at 5:25 AM

Trying to get your money out while there's still time! Quickly now!

cfttoday at 6:41 AM

Expect ⅕ codex quotas after

AFF87today at 11:10 AM

Reporting is going to be interesting. I wonder how their filings will look like and what will appear there

vascotoday at 6:14 AM

I'd be willing to make this a ban-bet, but my prediction is that either OpenAI or SpaceX's IPO will flop and that will be the signal that will start the new stock market crash. When it happens people will point at how obvious it was with the war and the bubble going for a while. But these 2 mega IPOs back to back will be interesting to follow.

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cdrnsfyesterday at 4:56 PM

Can't wait to see those revenue numbers.

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KellyCriteriontoday at 7:09 AM

OpenAI will let down trousers first, Anthropic will be wise to not IPO this year: SpaceX will collect a lot of money, i guess; then OAI afterwards.

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rvzyesterday at 4:45 PM

The "I" in "AGI" stands for IPO.

So as we can clearly observe: "AGI" which at this point is (A Giant IPO) is almost here.

Now all of humanity will benefit from this being e̶x̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶q̶u̶i̶d̶i̶t̶y̶ shared by everyone for everyone. Right?

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bandramitoday at 5:09 AM

Cool so will they release revenue and expense numbers in line with GAAP?

brcmthrowawayyesterday at 5:26 PM

Congrats to OpenAI and RIP to the SF housing market

Shailendra_Stoday at 1:35 PM

good to know.. this is a news for me..

535188B17C93743today at 12:36 PM

SpaceX and OpenAI? Market's gettin' frothy. Oh, this bubble is about to pop.

aurareturnyesterday at 4:47 PM

Throughout the “AI bubble” talk in 2024 and 2025, I consistently argued that we were nowhere near the peak of the AI bubble. So far, that view has held up, as valuations are significantly higher today than they were in 2024 and 2025.

If you look at the way the dotcom bubble unfolded, dotcom didn't take off until after Netscape IPOed in 1995. The market had 5 more years of growth until the collapse. And even after collapse, the Nasdaq was 2x higher post pop than in 1995.

If history repeats itself, the stock market will take off after OpenAI and/or Anthropic IPOs. Be scared when random AI companies IPO with bad ideas and no revenue.

My posts on AI bubble over the years:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40739829

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43385830

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035647

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241944

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throw03172019yesterday at 5:22 PM

Are they trying to beat SpaceX as well?

shartstoday at 6:04 AM

Now everyone is on the hook for this overpriced unprofitable monstrosity vis a vis pension and index funds. How much longer for the coming economic collapse…

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trilogictoday at 6:32 AM

>Anthropic is currently in talks with investors to raise money at a $900 billion valuation, which would push it ahead of OpenAI.

How you go from 380 to 900 billions in a month, I am very curious? So now Anthropic is evaluated 900 billions! Journalism this days is worse than my kids social media channel. Totally, I believe you, go for it, is just one more zero bro. Everyone Brace for Impact.

Let´s do it also, Breaking News: HUGSTON in talks with investors now Evaluated at 1 Billion Euro.

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m00dytoday at 9:40 AM

we are approaching end of the party.

myvoiceismypasstoday at 12:14 AM

You can get exposure to OpenAI now via the Robinhood Venture Fund I (RVI) if you so chose (that fund is up 170% since its inception earlier this year.)

skiing_crawlingyesterday at 5:23 PM

At this point IPOs are mainly for unloading bags onto retail. Every institution who wanted a piece of these labs got in years ago and captured all the value.

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cess11yesterday at 5:14 PM

Well, I guess that's an effective way to deflect responsibility for the harms they cause from the people actually in control of their software and databases, onto 'shareholders'.

nodesocketyesterday at 5:13 PM

Smart move IPO'ing ahead of Anthropic. Can take a lot of AI capital being first mover... That is, until Anthropic IPO's which I expect shortly.

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Kyeyesterday at 5:30 PM

Say OpenAI IPO 5 times fast

avazhitoday at 7:01 AM

I have no personal skin in the game in terms of investment posture, but OpenAI is, by an increasing margin, the weakest player. Claude and Gemini are both blatantly better (better as in smarter/more capable across all measures). Claude seems like the ‘smartest’ model and while Gemini is way more annoying to interact with in terms of its sycophantic nonsense and brain rot writing style, Google also has unlimited compute and I’ve literally never run out of tokens using any of Gemini’s models. And meanwhile Anthropic is seemingly addressing its biggest weakness, which is limited compute, by basically taking over from Grok’s computer hardware (I half expect Grok to get discontinued any day now - it sure seems like xAI has accepted that Claude is the front runner and they’re just getting behind it, kind of like what OpenAI agreed to do if they ever got behind in the AGI race back in ~2017).

So what does OpenAI even lead at? Name recognition because they were first? At some point they were supposed to be specialising in medicine but I notice no difference between Gemini and ChatGPT when it comes to medical questions or analysis.

My prediction is OpenAI will be the first big one to go bankrupt or be acquired, which is also probably why they are rushing this IPO: gotta get the founders cashed out.

Somewhat of an aside, but I have no idea if AGI is actually possible with LLMs, but Claude is the closest thing to a person that I’ve used (even if it has its moments of abject retardation - not unlike humans, I guess).

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iLoveOncallyesterday at 5:40 PM

I'll believe it when I see it.

Anthropic or OpenAI IPOing is literally signing their own death certificate.

The valuation will go to zero as soon as they have to submit actual numbers instead of the salad of bullshit they usually serve investors.

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cute_boiyesterday at 5:51 PM

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astklyesterday at 5:28 PM

It will probably be a failure, that is why they are rushing it to prevent a greater failure.

Microslop and Oracle are already way down from their highs. Only Nvidia as the shovel seller still performs well.

People generally hate AI. The IPO price will be inflated and the stock will drop 10% on the first day, like many late stage IPOs in the 2000 bubble.

Friends and family like the Kushners will cash out. Trump might even suspend wars around the IPO date.

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Oxlamarrtoday at 11:19 AM

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lpcvoidtoday at 9:09 AM

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SilverElfintoday at 6:01 AM

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dbbkyesterday at 4:42 PM

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aurareturnyesterday at 5:10 PM

Any early guesses on end of first day market cap?

I'm going to guess $2.5 trillion which is about 2.5x their current valuation. I think the hype is going to be immense.

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throwawaygmbnotoday at 4:08 AM

What is the advice from the internet?

Did you invest in Tesla and now invest in Open AI because who cares about ethics if you can make money?

Anthropic has the obviously the better product and were seemingly ethically better until they burnt their developer goodwill and started accepting Musk infrastructure.

But does having a better product actually translate to making more money?

Should I just lay down and die because there's no good choice when it comes to investing in this product they market as killing off people's livelihoods?

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