Sam Altman's reported $110 billion OpenAI round is four times larger than the biggest IPO ever. Jason M. Lemkin says it makes traditional IPO timing irrelevant. The combined funding for OpenAI and Anthropic exceeds all U.S. venture capital from the prior year.
The ultimate dealmaker, Sam Altman, closes a $110 billion round, 4x the size of the largest IPO ever. Is there any money left in the world to fund these businesses? The $200 and $400 million in revenue seems relatively paltry compared to the $110 billion he just raised.
Yeah, I mean, there's some meta— I mean, obviously they're not public and obviously the benefits are inuring to a relatively modest amount of shareholders, right? All of that stuff. But it does make you wonder if we should even be talking about the IPO window or any give this crap? It doesn't even matter when OpenAI can raise $110 billion. Oh, we're all worried some B2B company can't IPO at $400 million, growing 40% at $3 billion. What difference does it— like, it's so minuscule. I mean, it matters to the humans that work there, but it's not even relevant to the economy when OpenAI does $110 billion. They're going to do another one before the IPO, probably before the IPO if they can, right? They'll either be an IPO or another round like this, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a force of nature, right?
It's clearly a fortune, and it is astonishing. I mean, you know, any way you cut it, it's like, you know, you add up venture dollars raised year to day, invested year to day, you know, you kind of go 30 on Anthropic, 110 if you call it VC, is 140. You know, it's more than US venture for all of last year. So these are astonishing numbers, right? It's a very odd circumstance to have a private round be 4x the size of the largest IPO ever, right? And it does make you wonder how that IPO gets done, right?
