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Technically they are not profitable

“For-Profit ClosedAI” would work too

I understand what you're saying, but strictly speaking is it fair to say they aren't profitable? Didn't they along with other participants of LLM-race invest heavily into the infrastructure and the said infra wasn't yet delivered.

My understanding is that it's unreasonable to claim a hotel isn't profitable when they're still on the building stage.

I do understand that we don't have enough energy to turn it on when all of them are delivered, but that's a separate issue.

e: gah. Answered to the wrong post. Sorry.

An unprofitable non-profit.

No because they are not a non-profit since 2025.

It is worse than GPT5.5 ... but is so cheap that it doesn't really matter.

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

good luck getting a machine that can run its specs though. Even flash is goign to require ponying up 5-10 grand to run the minimal specs for it. The vast majority of people will find their machine falls behind as tech progresses long before they get a return on that investment. That said, it does mean there will be a healthy market for "generic providers" in the AI landscape with these open weight models.

Even investor knows this well, they will still do that if they can make other people to invest their hard earned moneys into this after them.

Isn’t knowing how to scale and optimize llm traffic the main barrier ?

That's not how money works. It's not an asset which is subject to conservation of matter like gold.

Banks make money by giving out loans is a meme, but it's actually true here. You kind of need collateral to do that, but a stock of a company which has revenue is a perfectly cromulent collateral even by strict standards. It's not even some infinite money glitch - it's kinda how the whole system is supposed to work.

The stock market is largely about betting on expectations of future value while money is just a token which is used to settle things. E.g. if you think about simplified mechanics of IPO, say, investor Alice buys OpenAI shares, OpenAI gets the money and Alice has shares. If for simplicity we assume that Alice and OpenAI use same bank and there are no intermediaries, then it literally just updates two cells in a database. And Alice now has shares which is an asset of known value, thus can be borrowed against, etc. Also, say, OpenAI can use that money to repay debt, then perhaps lender would buy SpaceX stocks - it's not like money was withdrawn from the system.

Of course, there can be some interference: multiple companies do IPO around same time it would reduce FOMO, and if they did it literally in one day there might be lack of liquidity.

I think it's because the private market can't possibly go any higher. OpenAI is already valued at around $1 trillion and just raised $122b.

The only next step is the public market.

> free market concept should move the prices down

Kind of a radical idea. I did read about that in economy books way back when at uni... but I don't think it's really happening actual. At least my walled doesn't seem to get it.

PS: it's a joke, free market works when there is competition. VCs are making damn sure it's just enough monopolies that they get wealthier while consumers themselves get milked. Without antitrust actually being enforced, there is no free market.

Since it appears that LLMs can't achieve AGI and lose hallucinations, I presume a new company will appear with a new architecture that can - what happens to the current behemoths and their stock prices? Will they jump architectures?

Splendidly interesting times.

This is also my understanding of why Twitter (and thus Grok) was acquired by SpaceX (which was already having an IPO). Less to do with GPUs in space, more to do with the first way to invest 'directly in AI companies without a proxy (e.g. nvidia).

Don't worry, the Fed can create infinite money!

If you were going to invest in any AI company literally the only one I would trust to still exist in 10 years would be Google

Everyone forgets that Amazon, Google, eBay had tens of competitors at the time. We only remember the winners.

Never thought about Amazon, but I did completely expect Facebook to tank. Apparently I underestimated their level of deviousness and willingness to manipulate people.

I don't even think I want to take a guess on OpenAI. I just don't think they can deliver a good product that aligns with my own moral compass, while trying to generate profit for shareholders.

All that is a side show. What would you have done with the cash if you were right? Thats always the real story.

My Aunt runs an accounting firm and is constantly moaning about the number of people who have over accumulated cash from IPOs and have no clue what to do with it all.

IMO they cannot let OpenAI fail.

It's not only an AI company, it's the symbol of AI hype. This AI hype is significant part of the US economy, and the AI infrastructure spending basically half of its growth.

("it's not this it's that", I swear it's human generated slop)

Anthropic actually turned an operating profit recently due to huge revenue growth.

WCGW… Companies with $500B+ valuation don’t bancrupt…

Enron entered the chat.

Note that index funds don't hold companies in proportion to their market cap, but in proportion to their free float (shares available to purchase on the market).

Both SpaceX and OpenAI's estimated free float are around 4-5% of their shares at IPO. This means that we really are talking about companies in the sub $100M valuation in term of index fund impact (assuming under $2T for each).

Collectively, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia already own approximately 25 - 35% of OpenAI and Anthropic respectively. They already are a part of your portfolio.

Afaik, Nasdaq removed the seasoning rules to include it from the start, S&P would usually be only a year after IPO but they are also discussing changes

What will managed funds do?

Are we now suggesting people get out of index funds?

Worse, will this and spacex ipo destroy the index funds?

So these extremely risky companies will become a big part of American retirement funds.

I am sure nothing bad will happen

Upside of robo advisors?

ETFs are a trap. Put most of your money in single stocks. It is ok to diversify, you don't need an ETF for this.

Anthropic is also a suitable choice.

I am starting to speculate that was the purpose of the openai lawsuit. Delay IPO.

Maybe Sams reaction to Elons ego?

It depends at least partially on how much they're going to float. I think SpaceX is only planning about a 4% float, so even at $1.5T they only need around $60B. Which is a drop in the bucket.

EDIT - but that's just the IPO, I wasn't even thinking about how much insiders will want to sell after the lockup ends...

I think one of them is not like the other.

I would invest in OpenAI or Anthropic or both but I doubt I'd invest in SpaceX.

These companies are burning enough cash that they will need to be public.

We’re about to have 3 of the worlds’s largest corporations be massively in the red.

I believe, but could be wrong, is that the big change is the time frame for index and managed funds buy in. It used to be a year, but it's much shorter now, like 2 weeks. Which means as long as they can maintain a high market cap relative to their exchange for that time period they will be stabilized by institutional funds and basically crowd sourcing any losses to the public and massively cashing out the internal pre-ipo investors.

At least that's my understanding of the current market dynamics regarding IPOS, if I'm wrong that would be great, and if someone else would explain it even better.

Current administration might rig the rules to take the credit of AI boom.

Even third world doesn't have this much shameless and corrupt regime as much as this one is.

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

Perhaps they will just tell a lot of lies.

In the past people would generally avoid this when it came to stock market filings for fear of legal consequences, but the OpenAI C-Suite is already at least +$26 million to Trump and has plenty more to send his way if that doesn't cover it.

Crime is legal in 2026 (if you can afford the kickback fees).

I'm guessing they had a significant revenue spike from gpt 5.4 and gpt 5.5 being so good at coding, and hiccups at anthropic making it easier for programmers to try the models.

They say that the CFO isnt ready for public scrutiny and deny her access to the accounting.

The CFO doesn't even report to Sam Altman directly. I would not assume that the decision is up to her in any meaningful way. I predicted a while ago and still stand by an 80% chance that their S1 is disastrous on the scale of WeWork; so, so much of what people think they know about OpenAI's finances is based on snippets and rumors rather than firm audited statements.

Given the nature of private conversations, I suppose there is no source to this claim?

Can't they just tell GPT-5.5 to fix their books, make no mistakes? Are the accountants also not replaceable by AI when doctors, lawyers and engineers are?

[dead]

Current investors know the hype is sufficient to not worry about all those niggling financial details and want liquidity now -- retail will buy them out.

yes, they will.

Has there been any good recent ipo’s?

They’re all down significantly from the date of going public.

I don’t really see how the price of OAI et al can go up - it’s already richly priced! The only way is down imo. But how much?

Considering how much they were priced a year ago even dropping 20% wouldn’t be bad… it’d be bad for insiders if the drop prolongs prior to the lock up period which is long enough to cause an even steeper drop. Also depending on the float - any non public trading shares face an illiquidity discount.

OpenAI reported ~$20 billion annualized revenue for 2025, up from $6 billion the year before.

I’m less interested in revenue and more interested in their operational costs

Agree, deeply interested in their books and then whatever report cadence we end up on next year.

I understand that a lot of people want to cash out, but I'm surprised they're ready to share, especially given I don't think they've had issues bringing in funding in the private markets, but maybe I'm wrong.

Anthropic will probably IPO as well

Yup, Sam can claim that AGI is owned by everyone (he really means their pension funds though), while he makes a hasty exit to his private island retreat which we all have paid for.

Companies IPO'd at an earlier stage of development in the days before Sarbanes-Oxley. Netscape was a 16-month-old startup when it IPO'd. It had about 250 employees. It had raised a total $27M in venture capital then, and then raised a few hundred million in the IPO itself, which gave it a total valuation of $2.9B. It had $16M in revenue and no earnings.

OpenAI is 10 years old. It has about 4500 employees. It's raised about $180B in capital, and has a valuation of roughly $900B on about $25B in revenue. Anthropic is 5 years old. It also has around 3000-5000 employees. It will have raised about $120-140B in capital, at a $900B valuation, on about $30-45B in revenue.

In the 80s and 90s companies IPO'd to actually raise growth capital - the public markets provided the money they needed to invest and expand, and then public investors reaped the benefits of their success, or paid the price of their failure. In the 2010s and 2020s companies grow with private capital, which has fewer strings attached, and then they unload the shares on the public market when they reach the top of their growth curve, leaving the public holding the bag.

> 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.

"Be fearful when others are greedy" — Warren Buffett

If this isn't a greedy market, I don't know what is. Also what does it mean for the stock market to 'take off' when it's been doing ATHs for a while despite the geopolitical turmoil? Even /r/wallstreetbets has more sensible takes than this.

> Be scared when random AI companies IPO with bad ideas and no revenue.

Shouldn't we at least be a little bit scared already when shoe companies pivot to AI and their stock goes up ~750%?

I think we're a lot closer to the peak than when Netscape IPO'd relative to the dotcom bust for a few reasons:

* big banks are trying to get out of their data center loan commitments, even selling that debt at a discount. From the article:

> According to the Financial Times, major lenders are already scrambling to offload pieces of massive data center loans through private transactions, risk transfers and synthetic structures. The reason is simple. AI infrastructure borrowing is reaching sizes that are beginning to choke the arteries of the financial system itself.

* there are real questions about long-term liquidity and capital capacity across the entire VC ecosystem. Ed Zitron estimates that the available capital for all technology VC funds will be fully exhausted within roughly two years if current spending levels hold steady. More money has been spent on AI in the last decade than the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Space Program and the US highway system combined[1]

* short-term success of these new data centers coming online is heavily reliant on steady fuel prices since hooking up to the grid can take years and many burn diesel generators while waiting for grid access. If the war in Iran drags on, high fuel prices will continue to ratchet up the cost of data center operations.

* public sentiment around the economy was largely positive heading into the collapse, whereas we've been in fairly consistent state of economic uncertainty for years now. Affordability was not a topic of conversation back then and a majority of Americans are unhappy with the direction of the economy in 2026.

0: https://www.investing.com/analysis/the-ai-boom-is-starting-t...

1: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/19/visualising-ai-spen...

Eh, at the beginning of 1995 the Nasdaq PE ratio was about 17.5. The current Nasdaq PE bounces around 33. During the dotcom bubble that would be the early 1998 timeframe.

[flagged]

This is what exponential growth in a limited world looks like.

It should still take a year until it's added to the indices, no? At least that's how I understood the SpaceX case: Elon wanted to rush it and get it done in 6 months.

So there's still hope that the bubble pops before the funds are poisoned.

> How you go from 380 to 900 billions in a month, I am very curious?

Mythos Marketing.

Wise comment. 25 years working in PE showed me that retail investors are how you pay off losses.

Yeah, and now the you shall not buy this bullshit begins. And then the price soars. :D

Well, sad to say this is simply untrue for a few reasons.

1. "Retail" does not have enough purchasing power to have all of these "bags" unloaded on to.

2. Institutions buy shares in public firms post-IPO all the time even when they're "unloading bags onto retail". Take Uber (random example) ~83% is owned by institutions.

3. General factual history of the stock market shows that you are incorrect. Successful companies that IPO and continue to do business still have quite a lot of room left to grow. What was Google's market capitalization at IPO? What is it now? Is it possible some early investors made higher multiples than the IPO -> May 20th valuation? Yea for sure. That doesn't mean that all the value was captured. It also doesn't take into account the early stage risk for investing. Is Google an "at this point IPO"? No, but the principle is the same.

It's also worth mentioning however that the number of IPOs is going down over time. You could maybe argue that the only ones that actually IPO are all the bags, but that seems like a stretch.

These cynical comments "IPOs are mainly for unloading bags on to retail" lack explanatory power and data.

Agreed. They should IPO first if they think Anthropic’s IPO will be bigger. Get as much capital as you can first, then use it to buy more compute and defensively.

The hype will be a lot less if Anthropic IPOs first and beats OpenAI’s numbers.

Honestly, even if anthropic models are better than OpenAIs, I don't understand how they want to make money. In October last year, the frontier models from US companies were so much better than the cheapest models, I thought it was over, but nowadays, even smaller models perform adequately enough. I now use free models (or rather, very cheap ones) in all of my personal projects, and even though anthropic's harness is hard to replace on complex cases (it helps understand where the LLM failed better, which allows to correct the mistakes more easily), I'm pretty sure pure LLM gains are less and less with each new models.

> I have no personal skin in the game, but OpenAI seems like the weakest player. Claude and Gemini are both blatantly better.

The market doesn't necessarily reward better products or (in this case) more intelligence.

If it did, I'd be a lot richer than many of the mainstream startups.

Anthropic models are well used for coding and similar tasks, and mostly through their own tooling as they are pretty aggressive limiting other usage.

But I don't see their models being used that much through api for all the applications that are using api nowadays. Openai is the one with the easiest api to use and the more lax about it.

Market can stay irrational longer than..

Them filing will burst the bubble.

What war? We've been assured the war is over, and we already won! Multiple times...

I’d take the Kalshi bet for far less than 2.5tn

You can sit this one out. There are many other opportunities to make money in the market. Ai build out is currently in play, and many names are rising accordinglym

Tesla used to be a kind of “ethical” play. They made electric cars cool.

>Anthropic has the obviously the better product

According to what metrics does Anthropic have the better product?

https://old.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/12j907w/anyone_else_h...

On an iPad, the first link is to a prompt to install an app.