Sam Altman raised $110 billion for OpenAI, four times larger than the biggest IPO ever. OpenAI and Anthropic alone raised $140 billion this year, exceeding all U.S. venture capital from the previous year, reshaping how capital flows in the economy.
The ultimate dealmaker that is 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 of 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. And they're going to do another one before they IPO, probably before the IPO if they can, right? There'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 force of nature and it is astonishing. I mean, you know, any way you cut it, it's like, you know, when you add up venture dollars raised year to day, invested year to date, 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?
