OpenAI is now seeking up to $20 billion. Down from more. A person familiar with the deal told CNBC the round hasn't closed and the numbers could change.
Read that again. Up to. Could change. Not closed.
This is the financial equivalent of a guy at a bar saying he's "kind of seeing someone."
Twenty billion dollars is a modest ask now. A bake sale for people who own private islands. The company trimmed its goal the way you trim a hedge, if the hedge were a mortgage on the moon.
Retail traders will take this as bearish. Others will call it bullish. Both groups will check a chart that has nothing to do with OpenAI, because OpenAI is private. You cannot buy it. You will try anyway. You will buy some ETF with "innovation" in the name and a fee structure designed by a pickpocket.
Notice the phrasing. "Pares." As if OpenAI took a small paring knife to its ambitions. Delicate. Precise. Like a chef removing the skin from a billion-dollar peach.
Nobody at OpenAI is sad about this. They are asking for twenty billion dollars. If you asked me for twenty dollars, I would need a lawyer and a witness.
The figures are subject to change. So is my opinion of this story, which started at zero and has plummeted.
Somewhere a retail trader is refreshing a headline about a private company's fundraising, waiting for a ticker that does not exist, to buy a stock that cannot be bought. His wife is in the next room. She has stopped asking questions.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
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