The story here is that Sam wanted to raise a lot more, but could not. Investors almost certainly want to see how the Anthropic IPO plays out before deciding whether to keep showering these companies with money.
Valuation wouldn’t hold if public. He couldn’t raise the 30B he wanted. I’m not sure how much runway OpenAI has, but sounds like a similar to Anthropic story with valuation likely if in the public markets declining.
Sam raised a $100B in previous round. I think a direct listing ipo would see their valuation go up to $4T, and then they could do some at the market sales as needed.
They didn't actually raise that 100 billion fully, tranches were contingent on different factors, some of which haven't even been hit yet.
why not just value it at 40T if we're all just throwing numbers randomly
The first $1 bajillion company
Ok, give me $1000 dollars for a stake in OpenAi at a $4T valuation and I will deliver you .000000025% of the company in stock when they go public.