SoftBank in talks to invest up to $30B more in OpenAI

"90% of VCs quit investing right before hitting the jackpot"

- Softbank's motto

"Solving" problems is useless. Spending trillions building a robot that might be able to solve a problem is way better.

> At the purported growth rates, you'd expect OpenAI to reach 60-100 billion revenue by 2028.

I hope that’s “real” revenue and not the cyclic quid pro quo that seems to be propping the whole thing up.

“My 3-month-old son is now TWICE as big as when he was born. He's on track to weigh 7.5 trillion pounds by age 10”

Nonsense. To give you a sense about how much $100B in revenue is, that would be the equivalent of every person in the United States paying $25/mo. Obviously that’s not happening, so how many businesses can and will pay far more than that, when there’s also Anthropic and Gemini offerings?

You're not counting the money they paid to Adam Neumann to walk away, which was over a billion dollars as well.

Imagine doing what was effectively fraud, building a cult around you, everything going completely to the fan, and then the team you defrauded turns around and gives you a billion dollars.

And then, you get Marc Andreesen to write you a $350 million check not too long after.

That's just magical thinking.

And Ethiopia couldn't get US$5 billion loan for a dam to service 60 million people.

The world is sick.

LLMs will create the pitch deck for molten salt reactors, provide progress reports, plans, and documentation, accept payment for delivery, and disappear into the night.

>why are you obsessed with how other people allocate their money?

I suggest you stop viewing the actions of multi billion dollar multinational corporations as anything similar to individual action.

Because Softbank are really bad at it, and they have lots of it.

https://www.reuters.com/business/softbanks-wework-once-most-...

Tu Quoque AND false equivalency. Impressive.

We should all care how resources are used, even if don't own them. That investment is going to make things more expensive for everyone. See RAM, SSD, and GPU prices.

What made you think that I'm "obsessed" with how other people spend money?

It's not their money.

Not sure if this is the same sentiment, but I feel that even though the technology is handy, the investment is speculation. Billions and billions are being spent on developing this technology hoping to create a unicorn that turns billions into trillions.

I know it's unrealistic, but imagine you took $30b and just started ploughing into a random city. Real estate, development grants, EV charging infra, renewable projects, transit. Just boring existing technology, but concentrated investment to make the other investments more valuable. You could turn that $30b into $60b in a few years while changing the lives of an entire city.

But American capital says no, and gambles it, because it's just a game to the people in charge.

Money is responsibility. While I pinch my pennies and show up to my day job, the people with the keys throw billions on an oil fire hoping it magically turns into gold.

> LLMs have unlocked a lot of value for me personally, and arguably for the society as a whole.

The second part doesn't follow from the first which, in turn, is irrelevant here because we aren't talking about any value for society, we're trying to figure out if that value is greater than its opportunity cost.

The "AI" has been with us for several years now but it hasn't improved overall productivity in any meaningful way and while it's use is already plateauing it keeps sucking in capital like a giant black hole.

> As a technologist, I'm really glad that money is pouring in and allowing us to find its limits.

That's not a good thing when it happens at the expense of the rest of society.

It's only natural that workers at NVIDIA and other suppliers of AI-related products would like the gravy train to travel their way in perpetuity, but they are literally wasting capital, which isn't theirs, for their own enrichment, while creating inflation, shortages and misallocations on a grand scale.

The issue isn't whether LLMs are useful: it's whether OpenAI is positioned to deliver substantial future profitability.

Given their competition consists of the largest tech companies in the world, several of which are vertically-integrated, have advanced AI research programs, and own the last hardware mile to the customer...

OpenAI better hope it can maintain a performance lead, while being able to run inference cheaper than its competitors, while also launching a must-have device it controls (AR/audio glasses?).

> 500,000,000 people paying $75/mo is $450B/yr.

Majority of people use ChatGPT for free, that's why they are introducing ads. Normal people will not pay 70-100$ per month for LLM subscription. Your numbers are way off.

Do you use cursor personally? the product is so good, i don't know why people aren't looking at the "companies will complain and pony up $20k a seat" isn't seen as a possibility here

You’re right to call out consumer use is what’s eating all the tokens. I suppose what was behind my way of putting it is: I haven’t seen much in the way of truly transformative products with LLMs in the consumer space. Sure, there’s a few power users doing some cool things, and lots of promises along the lines of “AI will plan and book you a whole vacation!”, but basically for the median consumer we have an “improved search”, and “fun image generation”, with people using it a couple times a week. So what is the product that changes the world and makes 500M people pay $100 a month? I don’t think it’s really here yet. This feels a bit like we’re in 1996 where people are still trying to figure out what the internet is for, and we don’t know if OpenAI will be 1996’s Amazon, or its AOL.

None of this is to deny how remarkable the underling LLM tech is. I never expected to see something like this in my lifetime; it feels far far more strange and new than when the iPhone came along. I use a coding agent daily and it’s dramatically changed how I work. But I still think we’re in a bubble here.

> And yeah, chinese models, but look at what they did to tiktok. No way they are going to let the Chinese government be peoples confidants

You're playing wack-a-mole with a paper mallet against a tank brigade. It's not only China, the EU is going to compete too in the "5-10 yr horizon".

The Chinese manage to compete while deprived of top semiconductor gear, which happens to be made only in the EU.

The Chinese models don't have to stay in China, they can be fine-tuned and used by many other countries, named differently, etc. Even if you try to block them all, others won't which would put the US in a sever competitive disadvantage, inflated and isolated, the dollar will be in the sewer, who cares how much openAI would make.

I used to hold this theory, but apparently Anthropic are planning to IPO, and surely both of them would be valued similarly?

Anthropic don't have all the free users, but they're also raising absurd amounts and have similar costs.

Okay, but I don't think we can call OpenAI a startup until it has reached the number one spot on NASDAQ with a $5 trillion valuation. Therefore, I believe now is a good time to focus on more realistic fundamentals, rather than fueling the hype by burning even more cash on the way to the absolute top, which is typical bubble mentality.

I'm really eager to see how Anthropic's IPO this year (if it even happens) will pan out.

This sounds good to the "earth is overpopulated" crowd.

I'm a billionaire in EVE Online, and even though that counts for nothing, it'd still be enough for him