These companies providing tokens, whether SOTA or not, that want to IPO are so fucked as time goes on.

Can't sell their SOTA models, only slightly better than the open source models for the models they can sell, cost 20x to 50x for good models, a TAM that consists almost solely of developers, with no customer of theirs actually boasting increased profits as a result of AI...

I fear their time to IPO may have passed.

The question is even, was there EVER a time for an IPO?

If the business model requires hundreds of billions to get the required quality (R&D but also infrastructure to collect data and train, either purchased or rented to 3rd party) while "only" dozens of billions can be earned back (as costs still exist to earn, it's not free once models are trained), then maybe there NEVER was nor till be a good time for an IPO in a rational market.