> OAI canceling an IPO this year a week after he released their dogshit financials

There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility.

> Do me a favor and tell me how much of the 1,000,000,000,000 spent / committed to a datacenter buildout has been returned to shareholders / investors?

If Anthropic also delays its IPO, you'll have a point.

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dofm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this.

How would there be? He's a blogger and a youtuber, they are a private company with secretive financials, bankers involved in pre-IPO work don't talk openly. Nobody is going to say "we only decided not to do this because of a youtuber" because that would make them look like the ill-informed, over-eager idiots they've been to let this nonsense get this far.

Why would there be any concrete evidence it was down to him specifically, and not, say, dozens of finance people saying "what the *fuck* is that marketing budget about — that's so large it looks like something's been hidden in it" after reading about it from him and the FT and everyone else who was involved.

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SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In what way is SpaceX's volatility an obvious cause? It would be one thing if SpaceX was down from its IPO price, but it's not, it's just down from a post-IPO peak. To me this has all the hallmarks of a backfilled rationalization.

> OpenAI’s advisers presented company executives with the option of waiting until 2027 to go public with a $1 trillion valuation, or lower the targeted valuation for a quicker I.P.O. Mr. Altman, said one person in contact with him on the topic, responded that any change to the trillion-dollar valuation was a nonstarter.

I really don't know how to read this and reach any conclusion other than, OpenAI leadership won't accept what financial analysts consider to be a rational valuation of its stock.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> In what way is SpaceX's volatility an obvious cause?

Let me amend: it's a more-obvious cause given it's pertinent new information in a way Zitron partially leaking financials many institutional investors have already seen is not.

> don't know how to read this and reach any conclusion other than, OpenAI leadership won't accept what financial analysts consider to be a rational valuation of its stock

Neither did SpaceX and, as you say, it's trading above its IPO price and placing tens of billions of dollars of debt.

I think Zitron's analysis was on the balance good, though it didn't say a lot of what folks on here seem to have taken away (e.g., about OpenAI's inference being marginally unprofitable). It seems he's got a bit of a cult of personality around him, which makes me inherently sceptical. But it's a pretty ridiculous reach to claim OpenAI had to delay its IPO because of him versus the much-more visible and talked about thing.

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SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps we're really on the same page. I don't think OpenAI executives read the Zitron article and said "oh my god now we can't IPO!"; I think they're both downstream of the underlying bad financials, which SpaceX only managed to mitigate due to the Elon Musk personality trade. (And I agree that this theory falsifiably predicts Anthropic will also find a reason to delay.)

	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> they're both downstream of the underlying bad financials, which SpaceX only managed to mitigate due to the Elon Musk personality trade Idk, I'm still sceptical how someone could look at the market right now and conclude that it's suddenly hyperaware of financial metrics. For whatever reason–maybe it's corporate-structure complexity, maybe it's lawsuits–OpenAI was always at the end of the pack of AI IPOs. If SK Hynix take August and Anthropic September or October, that would mean a 2026 OpenAI IPO would have to (a) coincide with one of those or (b) go to market during an election/post-election fiasco and/or the holidays. The realistic options were July or October, the latter being between a likely Anthropic IPO and the midterms. The timing just doesn't make sense and maybe someone realise that.

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therobots927 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money.

Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference).

Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious.

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jsnell 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference).

They did not.

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lovich 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Oh? They’re profitable now? Or anywhere close to it?

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jsnell 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, but the GP wasn't satisfied with that, and had to put in a snide "even on inference" parenthetical. The leaks showed inference having positive margins.

The Zitronites will say that the data is fraudulent, and OpenAI must have classified some of their inference as marketing, or R&D, or some other wacky theory of the week. But the actual data does not show that. It is made up.

If you want to cherry-pick the worst parts from the leak and disbelieve the more positive ones, it feels like you're not in a great place epistemically...

	▲	dofm 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The leaks showed inference having positive margins. They don't. They show that OpenAI need to people to draw that conclusion, because of course they do. > The Zitronites will say that the data is fraudulent, and OpenAI must have classified some of their inference as marketing, or R&D, or some other wacky theory of the week. But the actual data does not show that. It doesn't? It shows a marketing budget so absolutely mahoosive that it's almost completely implausible, which does make you think — have a percentage of marketing-driven free plan tokens been hidden in there? If not, what the hell is in there? Because it's an insane figure for a company that has benefited from a level of word of mouth that makes "ChatGPT" broadly synonymous with "AI". Fraudulent is a big claim, of course. I didn't say it.
	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> Zitronites will say that the data is fraudulent, and OpenAI must have classified some of their inference as marketing, or R&D, or some other wacky theory of the week Which, look, could be true! But it's currently speculation only.
	▲	therobots927 41 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		How do you explain OAI spending $6B on “sales and marketing” in a year. More than Coca Cola? I think it’s reasonable to draw the conclusion that they are folding inference subsidies (for both paying and non-paying users) under this category. Frankly I think occam’s razor demands it because where else would all that money have gone? Fancy trips for enterprise clients?

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money

What? How? SpaceX loses oodles of money. It's trading above its IPO, and just filled an oversubscribed bond deal.

> Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious

Zitron has a faithful following. He isn't a broadly-influential analyst.

	▲	therobots927 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You said: “ There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility.” What exactly do you think “volatility” means in this context?