Short answer: Sam Nadler says OpenAI raised 122 billion at an $852 billion valuation. Mitesh Agrawal notes India's whole VC and PE ecosystem is $50 billion and says a $600 million secondary block is hard to sell but small ones still find buyers.
Watch this answer from Episode 37 (starts at 19:24) · Episode 37 notes and transcript
From Episode 37: Why AI Inference Is So Expensive (And How Positron Is Solving It), starting at 19:24.
Sam Nadler [19:24]: I think we have two articles here. OpenAI raises 3,000,000,000 from retail investors at a 800 at a total 122,000,000,000 raise, a $852,000,000,000 valuation. But at the same time, there's rumors it's falling out of favor with secondary buyers. Jordan, what's your take?
Jordan Metzner [19:44]: I don't know. I thought just thought, like, both stories were pretty funny. I mean, I thought that, obviously, it seems like OpenAI can continue to raise insane amounts of money at almost any price. And I think they mentioned some revenue. I think it's I think the revenue was on this article, but if not, it's
Mitesh Agrawal [20:00]: 24,000,000,000 ARR.
Jordan Metzner [20:01]: Yeah. 2,000,000,000 a month or something like that in revenue. Yeah. So, I mean, the numbers are bonkers, and it seems like there's probably insatiable demand to get in. And then the story about that they can't sell secondary, I don't know, seems surprising to me if they can fill rounds at primary premium prices.
Mitesh Agrawal [20:18]: Yeah. Can I give some color to that? I know a little bit around this market and how they are writing that story. Okay. So so so first and foremost, like just on the OpenAI raising $122 billion, just how bonkers that is.
Jordan Metzner [20:32]: The is insane.
Mitesh Agrawal [20:34]: Like look, India is what? The fifth largest or sixth largest economy in the world? The entire VC plus PE ecosystem in India is $50,000,000,000. Okay? So one company, OpenAI raising 122,000,000,000 is, first of all, just mind boggling. Right? Okay. Yeah. Second thing, on the other side so that's the good part. The second thing is, isn't it interesting? Like, OpenAI is claiming 2,000,000,000 monthly and 24,000,000,000 ARR. Right? Meta is at $400,000,000,000, I think, annualized sorry. Meta is like, sorry, 40,000,000,000 or something like that. I forget how much were revenue, but they have like a crazy GMV. Meta has a crazy GMV and then their net profit is lower. But the point is that Meta is a $1,450,000,000,000 company. Right? So there's a huge kind of gap between what people are pursuing the value of AI companies to be and what existing companies like, there's almost a discount. Like, the biggest one is, to me, it's funnily enough, like Google or Amazon.
Mitesh Agrawal [21:31]: They own like, 10% of these companies, and their discount is is massive compared to what these companies are being valued at. So it's very interesting how much demand there is for this company that the valuation is is so strong for Anthropic and OpenAI. And so that gets into my point about secondary. I like it's a very kind of not clickbait y, it's like a very headline based target. Look, if someone is trying to offload $600,000,000 worth of secondary, yeah, they're gonna have trouble finding a buyer for $600,000,000 but I guarantee if someone's trying to play 6,000,000 or 5,000,000, they'll find that appetite. Right? So in fact, I think I I'm pretty sure, like, I Mean, I'm I'm curious if Sam ever comments on this, but, like, if they just ask, like, hey, will OpenAI buy their employees secondary for up to a certain amount, know, 1,000,000, 2,000,000, 5,000,000 per employee, I'm sure OpenAI will be like, yeah, like, we will buy it at a certain discounted price to the valuation because OpenAI obviously feels that they're gonna be a multi trillion dollar company. Right? So so so they can do that. Right? So I think it's an interesting thing, and also it's like we are obviously in love with Anthropic, and all of us are in love with Claude Code, and then the Opus models, and then who knows.
Mitesh Agrawal [22:48]: So I think people are trying to play that off, and it is right that people especially when Anthropic is valid as one forty billion or one fifty, the run previous to current one, it was trading at a massive discount to what OpenAI's kind of valuation was. Right? So I think that's what the better take of that article should be, that people believe that Anthropic is better priced than OpenAI, there's more demand for Anthropic, but the fact that it's falling out of favor with secondary buyers, it's like saying that, yeah, OpenAI was number one in terms of demand for secondary buyers, it's now falling to number seven. It's like, great. Like, there's still a lot of demand. It's just like, yeah, it's in terms of demand ranking, it's gone a little bit down downstream.
Jordan Metzner [23:27]: Yeah. I mean, obviously, it's like the positioning of who's their customers. Right? So, the market kinda giving a larger discount to the consumer customer versus, like, Anthropic to the enterprise customer. Right? But I think it under underestimates the OpenAI opportunity to compete against Anthropic in the same space pretty competitively. Okay. Well, anyway, yeah, great story. Honestly, great episode, Sam. We got one more quick story. Let's go.
