I fear that OpenAi and Anthropic would not be able to compete against an adveserial Alphabet which owns it's own models, hardware, large corpus of data, talent and network effects. My prediction is that OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually be crushed by Alphabet as they run out of investment and compute, leaving Alphabet to have a monopoly on AI, at least in the west.
This is why I think OpenAI and Anthropic should really be one company, if they join forces and pool together investments and compute they'll stand a chance.
I think the more companies there are, the better. Having 3 top labs competing, with 2 more trailing is better for consumers than having a monopoly/duopoly in goog or goog vs. the world. There'll be pressure on innovation, cost, availability and so on.
We're seeing that compute and investment liquidity is effectively a zero-sum game and by having Google go after the excess compute and liquidity (which they don't really need) will most likely weaken the competitors to the point where they aren't competitive. But if OpenAI and Anthropic merge they can pool resources and be more competitive.
Many people thought Google+ would stomp all over Facebook, and that GCP would kill Azure and AWS for most of the same reasons.
It's the other way around (but the result would be the same): Alphabet has no need to make a 100x exit for the investors, and so can offer the service at cost + %markup, while Anthropic and OpenAI are VC funded, meaning that they need to show 10x - 100x exit for the investors.
IOW, there is no moat, Alphabet would have market-related pricing while VC-backed corps cannot offer market-related pricing.
If this was true, Alphabet wouldn't currently be charging more for a worse product than OpenAI and Anthropic.
Consolidation is inevitable, so let’s lean in and ensure society, not shareholders, reap those benefits.
The scary thing for google is if the AI companies start moving into ad targeting and open sales portals.
You might as well say the same about GCP vs AWS. At the end of the day, in spite of how much superior engineering prowess it has, Google still treats its customers like it views them as a steaming, fly-covered pile of crap. This reflects just as much in Gemini as in their other products; after their initial competitive Gemini 2.5 Pro release, they just kept dumbing it down and reducing quality of service while charging the the same amount, trying to pull a bait-and-switch, and with their latest Gemini Flash release they're charging customers even more for a worse product. No amount of engineering or hardware can overcome such a customer-hostile corporate culture.
How's that talent been working out for them the last few years?
Where we land remains to be seen.
I still think it could crash, but it's got real users and a mind share like nothing I've ever seen.
My parents love using ChatGPT, asking it all kinds of questions. My mom discovered Claude and helps her immensely with her job - where she would have to take it home and work a few hours to be able to finish the tasks on her computer, as her company that still uses Office 98, now Claude does it in 5 minutes.
They fixed so many random issues using it, it is insane. My dad had a bike issue which would otherwise be solved by either trying to find obscure manuals from 20 years ago on random forums with me translating it from english to our language, or by taking it to a mechanic which could take months. This way, he just snapped a few photos, said what the problem is, and in a few minutes he had the fix.
I've built software that uses LLM's for a specific usecase - besides general adoption, professionals in the field contacted me and thanked me for making their lives easier, as the tasks would often take a lot of manual work. These people are earning way more from using my software, than I am from their subscriptions, which is still about 20x more than my API costs are.
While most non-dev people are behind the curve, the impact it has on their lives is becoming bigger and bigger by the day.
Keep in mind that people said this before both of those crashes.That's the problem with bubbles. It's impossible to say if this time really IS different.
The point he makes is that companies go public when they think they can get the maximum our of their shares on the retail market. Which make sense I guess.
But the fact that the 3 of them are hitting the public market at the same time means they all came to the conclusion that now is the perfect time to unload those shares. Probably because they know there is a high chance of a big crash coming after.
I will not touch those IPOs with a 10 feet long pole. But unfortunately a lot of people are about to get burned.
My prediction is that this is what will be remembered as the last bit of exuberance before everything starts to unravel.
Books will be written about how insiders will be profiting millions by unloading those shares to the greatest fools and middle class america.
I think this is what's going on right now. But there are a variety of reasons that can drive IPO timing. Need for cash and owners needing liquidity being chief among them.
I'd also say that post-Covid, retail has become a commanding section of the American equity markets in a way I don't think they've been in my lifetime. As a result, every IPO from now on will have to target retail.
One of the more rational ideas I have seen of any kind of divination is that it provides a means of passing judgement over to a near seemingly random system. If you are reading tea leaves, doing an 'I Ching' divination, biobliomancy etc. that essentially provides a coin flip to make you go 'yes' or 'no' to an opportunity.
And if you are already sure of the correct solution, then you can just keep doing the divination over and over again until the gods give the answers that you want!
(I mean, I think this looks incredibly like a bubble too, but for completeness sake, that's the counterexample I can think of.)
It's also similar to 2024 when HN was sure that AI is a bubble.
Similar to 2025 when HN commentators were sure that AI is a bubble.
1000% gains later, HN will continue to identify patterns of 2000/2008 and are absolutely convinced it is a bubble
Note: If a company gains 1000% and loses 50%, you can't claim you were right.
Both OpenAI and Anthropic have already gained 1000% since 2023 (In Anthropic's case almost 10,000%)
We could very well go back to the 2021 valuations.
(Actually the subsidiary is everything and the nonprofit is a do-nothing fig leaf but the IRS and Congress seem to not care enough to stop them.)
Similar to Google with "Don't be evil". At least they got the decency to eventually remove it when they realized they were actually doing evil.
How is this not illegal? What prevents any nonprofit from doing this to sidestep its filing status and extract profit?
1) In order to fund research - this stuff costs 10s of billions of dollars - everyone, from Ilya, to Elon, to Sam - all agreed that they would require a profit-arm to raise money. Nobody was going to sponsor that 10s of billions of dollars to a non-profit.
2) The non profit is still there - and controls the commercial element.
That will be especially untrue after IPO when shareholders can claim there are fiduciary responsibilities that conflict with the non profit goals.
The non-profit hasn't controlled squat since they tried and failed to fire Sam Altman.
How much has MacKenzie Scott donated to non-profits again?
Seems like such a claim is on thin ice.
The for-profit (OpenAI Group PBC) is what's filing the S-1 Draft.
The OpenAI Foundation also exclusively appoints the board of the OpenAI Group PBC and can replace directors at any time.
https://openai.com/our-structure/
(I work at OpenAI, but I am not a lawyer and am not speaking on behalf of OpenAI - just sharing my personal understanding.)
Isn't it hard to write this with a straight face?
The corporation selling shares is subject to normal corporate tax regime
The real answer to your question is that non profits can own shares, and there is no legal difference between passive investment of other publicly traded companies and highly consolidated shares of a private company. In the US it is seen as merely happenstance that we have such a liquid market where the shares themselves can rapidly change in value and create profits, but there is nothing controversial about that.
Which market? The stock market? Or the tech stocks? Or something else?
Both.
Across the entire stock market, not a ton of bright spots _except_ for Tech.
Take a look here: https://finviz.com/map?t=sec_all&st=w52
So a simple valuation would be something like Current Cash + Assets + Expected Future cash - (Expenses + Risk)
Failing companies sometimes trade below cash value. OP's basically creating a rule by which only failing companies are allowed to go public. (Or those who have paid a king's ransom to a megabank.)
your suggestion makes no sense
Presumably those things were harder as a charity/non-profit.
Perhaps Larry Ellison can cut them a nice quid pro quo for a few months to make OpenAI look profitable (like the SpaceX/Anthropic deal), although that's probably unlikely given the debt Oracle is taking on to build it's infra.
I understand the scepticism around Google's deal with SpaceX, given the former holds a stake in the latter. But Anthropic buying SpaceX's compute doesn't have any related-party smell to it. That genuinely looks like SpaceX having cornered some valuable compute.
Eh given the quality of recent IPO proposals I think they can just say there's a couple zillion air molecules to turn into gold and be done with it.
Seems an awful lot like Apple will commoditize the models that power Siri, and just “sherlocked” a trillion dollar private company.
Apple has sat out a capital-allocation shitshow. Its investors and likely customers are better off for their patience.
It's not an existential risk to them unless they make it one by going all in.
The most famous would be the iPod, but there are others.
What is your disposition to OpenAI?
If you think Sam Altman is bad for the industry, imagine what 200 of him will be like!
Is there a chart, somewhere, like a family tree, of what the Apple and Microsoft stock "ordinary millionaires" went on to do?
edit: id love to tally all the donations done by techies and compare them to how much of bezos fortune has ended up routed to charity via his ex
[1] https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026-42-sec-prop...
[2] https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/2026/05/s7-2026-15
[3] https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/proposed/2026/33-11414.pdf
I think that’s the thought process and why they’re in such a rush. In fact all three are in a sort of race, you probably don’t want to be the last one to IPO
They don't really have a choice - there is a finite amount of money in the open market, and the first one to IPO is going to get the lion's share of that money.
Cursor is purportedly a huge customer of OAI, maybe a top five? I think Elon bought it to have leverage on sama.
If timed correctly, Elon could pull the plug on a huge customer (Cursor) the quarter before OAI try to IPO.
Elon is 100% a for profit person, it's just a 10 year rivalry between Sam and Elon.
https://www.notus.org/technology/trump-blindsided-ai-compani...
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pitched the idea of turning over shares in his company to Trump in early 2025 and discussed the matter again with senior officials in recent weeks
Where?
“Under the JOBS Act, it has been possible since April 2012 for ‘emerging growth companies’ to file a Form S-1 on a confidential basis, only making the contents public 21 days prior to the road show for the IPO” [1]. Since 2017 and 2025 it’s been available to basically all companies [2].
Withdrawing an IPO looks bad. Confidential filing lets issuers start and have the option to abort the process without taking reputational damage. (The specifics of OpenAI’s filing, and any back and forth with the SEC, remains confidential.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_S-1
[2] https://www.sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/division-corpora...
Once it no longer is being drafted—and agreed upon by all parties to meet the needed regulatory standards—it will become final and be publicly published.
The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.The I in AGI has always stood for IPO.
i think that we are going to see another leg up but this is gonna be it for a while
Having said that, it’s the company I have least faith in due to the recent acquisition of xAI / Twitter.
Pension funds are rarely passively run. They tend to be sophisticated investors. For example, several pension funds are already investors in SpaceX.
NASDAQ 100 will include SpaceX after a couple weeks. But it's a tech fund. It's strange to complain about buying the largest tech company in a tech fund. Similarly, S&P total market and Russell total market will buy early. But again, those are total-market funds. If you want to actively manage your portfolio, don't buy total-market funds.
I’m not clear how much crossover demand there is between SX and Anthropic/oAI — that seems like the more interesting question. I’m guessing if we had Anthropic/oAI launching at the same time we’d see some pretty interesting capital dynamics.
What?
Once the SEC declares a registration statement "effective," the company is subject to the Exchange Act's reporting requirements. Theoretically one can do this and not list one's shares. That's dumb, so nobody does it.
In practice, we'll get a couple weeks to possibly days ahead of the listing. That process is partly governed by the SEC accepting the company's S-1. It's mostly down to negotiations between the company, its underwriters and IPO investors.
if you have a 'moat' then you wouldn't worry about releasing a draft S1. I assume OpenAI has neither.
Maybe the solution to s..tposters is to do what Wikipedia does.
Some articles/topics are "protected" and new/unverified accounts cannot touch them.
The revenue trajectory is now anemic, no clear sign of stopping the cash burn anytime soon, and all the liability associated with all things Sam Altman at this point. Frankly it’s a mess.
In Warren Buffet’s Cinderella party scenario it’s 11:59 at the party and someone just found an accurate clock.