VC

Exact_Acanthaceae294

That money is all VC capital. At some point, the vultures will want their money back.

redlancer_1987

AI bubble like dotcom boom was back in the day. Individual companies with shit/no product will run out of VC funding and die, but the underlying technology, AI now and the Internet as a whole then, are going nowhere.

BlackSquirrel05

Pelosi's Husband, also had his VC before she married him, and got into office.

iwilldeletethisacct2

Her husband got lucky. Investing is his full time job as a VC and real estate guy.

iwilldeletethisacct2

Person married to a VC and Real Estate Investor, living in San Francisco, makes money by investing in tech stocks. No one could have predicted this.

Clear_Anything1232

I guess no one told the VC assholes that the party is over They are still doing 50x revenue valuation deals

Jackoberto01

Yes and although big tech is profitable, the user facing AI products of today are not. AI related B2B services, hardware, etc is making money but like you say it's round tripping. User facing AI products are being subsidized by other more profitable products, VC money and other outside investment.

googlemehard

It doesn't matter what happens to VC cash. It is expandable income for the most part. If anything it is good to see it enter the economy. What matters is the value of the shares once everyone starts to sell, but I doubt it will be a sudden fall with the dot-com boom. My biggest concern is definitely AGI taking every job. The only limit to AGI will be the energy cost needed to solve problems. If it takes a $100,000 in energy and equipment cost to complete one complex question without hallucinations then it is not as competitive with humans, but it will be faster, way faster. 

AccountOfMyAncestors

The only people I ever hear mentioning them, are VC investors that I suspect are trying to pump their bags

cknipe

During the dot com boom Cisco and Sun Microsystems made tons of money selling equipment to doomed VC-funded businesses. That didn't help them when their customers couldn't pay their bills anymore.

ketralnis

> Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta [...] Google Maps, YouTube, Windows, Office, Android, Instagram etc Sure, they existed before the bubble and the products you're listing are pre-AI products. Nobody is worried about those products, except maybe Nvidia since while their product existed before, their volume and structure and valuation has tilted entirely towards the actual AI companies. What people are worried about are (1) OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and every VC cash awash AI startup that _doesn't_ have profitable products and (2) the portion of the valuation of the preexisting companies attributable to the AI bubble. I mean yeah, Kraft existed before the AI bubble and had products then. But if they started selling shitcoins in 2019 and their valuation tripled from blockchain hype, maybe that new 60% of their stock price is at risk when that bubble pops.

Sandvicheater

Anybody think GOOG is gonna dildo peg OpenAI the moment they IPO during the AI wars? GOOG got both the AI software and Quantum hardware which is the perfect 1-2 hit combo when it comes to AI. OpenAI doesn't even have a in house quantum solution yet and what I understand is just buying couple of VC quantum companies to cobble together their own Quantum.

Degen55555

> there is a bubble There is definitely a bubble forming but not on a scale of 2000 dotcom where we had thousands of "publicly" traded companies like eToys. All of these tiny startup AI companies aren't listed or being traded. This is a very controlled bubble with most of the investment on just a handful of godlike companies (NVDA, GOOG, etc). People wanting 2000 dotcom style crash and that ain't happening anytime soon. If the VC funding dried up, the market will correct but no where will be on the same scale as 2000 or 2009. It will probably be a very minimal 25-30% at the most for S&P500.

PeachRobbler

VC money absolutely does run dry when interest rates are high 😂😂 Genuine question.. how many startups have you worked with that are seeking VC funding rounds? I can tell you from experience that it is not a cake walk and has not been for well over 4-5yrs

deathdealer351

Death, taxes, USA always has bomb money no matter who is in office, VC money never runs dry.. Now vc money does shift was not long ago people were getting millions to build block chain bullshit, then social gig work bullshit, now AI bullshit.. It will shift to the next thing eventually. 

Nice-Jump7032

They might say those suckers failed, we are different and we will succeed. But VC will recognize it first. then less seed money, then more companies belly up...

iamclarkgriswold

Thank you for the perspective. From my side (PE), that’s very much how VC works. Mostly losers but the winners make up for it.

PeachRobbler

Yes I can. Its part of a 2 pronged issue: - Companies offering LLMs like OpenAI are subsidizing the industry by offering an unsustainable payment model. (free chatGPT is not actually free.. openAI is paying the costs for people to ask chatGPT what to eat for breakfast) - VCs are also subsidizing the industry by footing the cost for AI related development (extreme bullish sentiment in the market leads VCs to believe AI plays cannot fail. so they are footing as much AI related development and server costs as possible) Although the companies I've interviewed with are tiny, this is part of a much bigger patter that easily represents hundeds of billions in aggregate. If you consider that startup was 1 out of a couple thousand, 30mil x 1000 = 30bil ... And thats just the VC side. Hard to say what the "deficit" these companies with LLMs are running.

PeachRobbler

you dont need to see a company's balance sheet. startups (usually) receive Venture Capital (VC) funding, and the amount of VC funds they have raised is openly shared by the company, because its valuable for potential employees or even business partners to know. (for potential employees.. the more $ you have, the more stable you are)

PeachRobbler

Brother, I am a software developer, and I can tell you this... some of the AI startups that I interview with will make you believe there is a bubble, real quick. Some of these companies are getting 7-8 figures to build an absolutely ridiculous idea that will make no money. The VC funding is going to dry ul in the next year when return goals are not met, and the bubble will start to "burst"

Willing-Promotion685

What the heck are you talking about. Nvidia is dependent on the institutional players in AI: Alphabet, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft. These companies are betting big on AI and there is a risk it doesn’t pan out the way everyone is hoping … but this has nothing to do with startups, the advice of VC’s, or 100x returns in 2 years … whatever that means … I do agree the circular spending commitments should not be increasing stock price. That part is a bit of a red flag, shows investors don’t really know what happening beyond a headline.

Rude_Judgment7928

At some point a 17 year old company needs to stop talking about fucking revenue. No one gives a shit. I can make $1B in revenue with $1.1B in COGS tomorrow. Give me some seed funding VC bros.

f1ve-Star

Oh gods. You mean there is an ill conceived business model that has a lot of VC money thrown at it because AI is involved. No way!!

SolomonKings7

Nah, just looks interesting how just by having big VC names behind ( Thiel and the Gang) it’s enough to pump it

Jmbh1983

Not arguing that it’s a bubble, *but* MSFT likely does better here because of the VC money that comes in too. Sure, MSFT gives OpenAI money that comes right back, but that money also helps direct a bunch of VC cash as well. So MSFT gets OpenAI equity, plus a bunch of inbound VC cash, which seems like a pretty good deal. The real losers here are likely to be anyone who buys OpenAI equity in the IPO (when it happens) at a crazy valuation.

Envenger

+1 when you also realize how VC's function of funneling money into big tech.

Rick_The_Duck

PLTR beats estimates while the government's literally shut down – because surveillance capitalism doesn't take snow days, baby. Turns out the only thing dystopia is good for is the quarterly report. Karp just dunked on the "detractors left in deranged befuddlement" while retail made VC-level returns. ApeTown Inc.

samarijackfan

VC's

greenpride32

Startups start off with $0 revenue and $0 profit - they have an idea, some talent and relatively small cash pool. They take those assets and market them to deep pocketed angel investors or venture captial firms to raise money in exchange for equity. OpenAI is no different in this case. Earlier this year they raised $40b from VC's - that's not to mention all the other prior rounds of funding over the years - perhaps most well known is MSFT's $13b. $40b is quite a large number. In fact it's higher than the market cap of half of the SP500 members. They have more purchasing power than other companies because investors have high conviction the company will succeed in the future and make their investment profitable - it's as simple as that.

MikeDFootball

Ok. It's just curious to hear since...and to be clear I don't have any insider information whatsoever...I know that the company was originally backed by only a small group of investors. Typically whenever a company is hot shit, VC firms are first to offer cash. Meanwhile, when technology companies do well it is always the backers who want to IPO so they can get their cash back, meanwhile Palantir took their sweet time getting to be publicly traded. Then again, this is a weird area, not your typical type of technology, so who knows really. Again, private company means they owe public investors nothing. I do know that their current PE ratio is bonkers.

spyputs1

Where’s the up and comers? I’d give them $100 a pop and hope for the best, poor man’s VC type shit

Pvt_Twinkietoes

The more money they burn, the more VC will love them.

Majestic-Ad-1448

Anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a well disciplined VC.

the__storm

Well it's the Y Combinator logo. But it's a private VC firm so I don't know what OP is smoking.

croissant_and_cafe

Investment finance/PE/VC

Rare-Energy-4357

I honestly think the notion that getting rich young is reserved for celebrities and influencers now, not traditional entrepreneurs, is fundamentally correct because the economy has shifted to value attention and brand scaling over slow-burn product development. The path for a 20-year-old to make millions used to be an extremely rare event in tech, requiring years of coding and VC connections; today, a 20-year-old with a camera and a viral personality can monetize a global audience in months, making liquidity far faster. While there are still brilliant young founders out there, the vast majority of traditional high-growth companies are being started by experienced founders in their 30s and 40s who have the established networks, capital, and maturity needed to navigate today's complex business landscape, leaving the under-25 self-made millionaire demographic dominated by those who successfully build a business where they are the product.

Maleficent_Throat_36

Hello. Thank you for taking time to write a long response. Issue I have is I think there are some major inaccuracies here. It is well documented that the US entered the war to contain communism, due to the 'domino theory'. I'm not sure where you are from (I assume US), but we are taught about this in high school in a genral history course. I assume in the US you might be getting a reconstructed view of history that paints the US in a better light? Could that be true? I am aware the US has an odd school board system where locally elected people can push their agendas into the classroom. Could that be the case here? You claim Vietnam was about making China and Russia work together to strain their relationship. This is not true. It is well documented that the issue was Mao wanted a split from the West, whereas Khrushchev's wanted "peaceful coexistence". Mao saw this as selling out the cause. You can read about it here: [https://daily.jstor.org/a-messy-divorce-the-sino-soviet-split/](https://daily.jstor.org/a-messy-divorce-the-sino-soviet-split/) You stated the loss was a cover story. This is simply not true. The Vietnam war is well documented to have been a almost complete strategic failure because its primary objective failed. Vietnam is still a socialist country to this day. The famous 'fall of saignon' is a well evidenced event that is etched into modern culture. Gosh, even your average 15 year old European kid knows about it. Stanley Karnnow, historian, has written extensively on this. Many reporters were in Vietnam on the ground. There is no conspiracy going on. Good article here I found: [https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=aujh](https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=aujh) (what I learnt at school: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zv7bkqt/revision/3](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zv7bkqt/revision/3) ) You said th VC insurgency was destroyed. This is also simply untrue. The VC were supported by the NFA and remained strong throughout the war. It was not a quick withdrawel at all. It took the US years to finally leave vietnam, via the Paris Peace Accords. This can be confirmed by looking at the US's own Office of History and the Presidential Library.. again, all of this is well documented. Good summary here: [https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/us-withdrawal-vietnam](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/us-withdrawal-vietnam) You claim the US entered Afghanistan and Iraq to strain a rival.. again, this is completely false, sorry. The US entered those wars following 9/11 as counter terrorism measures. You can read the 9/1 report, all the reports from the time, numerous books on this topic, news etc... There is no evidence what you said is true that I know of? [https://tnsr.org/2023/06/why-did-the-united-states-invade-iraq-the-debate-at-20-years/](https://tnsr.org/2023/06/why-did-the-united-states-invade-iraq-the-debate-at-20-years/) You claim the US left the middle east as it lost strategic importance. Again, this is simply wrong. The US left the middle east because of pressure domestically, the NSC's own documents showed it had failed its mission to bring about stable states, and wanted to reduce military caualties. These wars were both failures, by and large. Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban. Iraq is a quasi failed state. The mission failed. I do agree it's likely Europe and the US might be safer from jihadism following the Iraq war, but I think over the long term, these failed states will produce a lot more headaches for the west going forwards.

Wonderful_Eagle_6547

The key word in my last sentence was "was". When the US got involved in Vietnam in the 50s, they had been decimated by a famine at the end of WW2, Communists had made a mess of any semblance of French industrial development in the north, and the growing insurgency in the South was disruptive to the more agrarian south. The Americans were concerned about not just the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia, but the spread of Soviet-influenced international communism (anti-capitalist) vs. Chinese-influenced international communism (which was more anti-colonial in nature). And most of all, they were concerned about the unified Sino-Soviet block spreading throughout Asia and forcing the US out of the region entirely. The US at the time had the Soviets and Chinese penned in on the Pacific side with large American military installations in Korea, Japan, and the Phillippines and the British still based in Singapore and Hong Kong. The US's strategy focused on forcing the Chinese and the Soviets to cooperate on Vietnam to strain their relationship and squeezing China on trade through leveraging our international relationships. This created a dependency on the Soviet economy to produce and export higher end or higher complexity items (industrial equipment, machinery, military hardware) rather than getting it from other international trading partners, and the Soviets were barely able to produce enough for their own country let alone a neighboring country of nearly a billion people with aspirations of industrialization. By 1970, Mao had decided he's rather be friends with the wealthy former colonizers than Brezhnev's poor nephew, and it didn't help the everyone remembered when the Russian Empire annexed territories the size fo the US East of the Mississippi less than 100 years prior. Once that alliance was broken up and the VC insurgency was destroyed, the US had very limited interest in maintaining a presence in Vietnam and troop drawdown happened quickly after 1969. The popular perceiption that the war was ended in a loss without achieving the objectives of the war was something of a cover story because, "we don't care about this place where all our boys have been dying because China and Russia don't like each other anymore" didn't sound that great. Our ultimate objectives were to fight in Vietnam without pulling China directly into the war (which btw is what we were supposed to do in Korea until that fucking idiot MacArthur went off the reservation) which was why the ground war was contained largely to the South. We did the same thing to Iran in Iraq and Afghanistan (and pulled out when the Middle East lost strategic importance in the wake of the US becoming the swing producer of oil in the 2010s). Russia is currently doing the same thing in Ukraine, but poorly executing the strategy (trying to strain the NATO relationship, but they have lost 10 times as many troops as the US did in Vietman and depleted their military power).

tkhan456

The only reason the $1 trillion IPO claim was made of so they can steer dumping shares on the private market on dumb retail that thinks it’s smart and has connections to get shares in the private market while the VC people cash out at inflated prices

itsnotshade

It’s absolutely a bubble, but unlike 1999 we do have companies that bring in huge sums of money from ads/services so they can keep the AI capex going. It’s like having a high earner support his wife’s flower shop business. As soon as there’s a collective pullback from the 4 big tech spenders think the party ends but Nvidia turning into a VC company with all its investments will keep it going past the end of next year imo.

Wonderful_Eagle_6547

I think there are some events that rise to a level of moral judgment that you can't consider them "bathwater". I wouldn't dispute that China has been extremely successful in the last 30 years and the global order is approaching more of a bi-polar order than the 20ish years of American hegemony. On the topic of understanding other countries history, I think you should back up a bit when you think about the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war for the United States, at least, was three different levels of conflict. There was the ongoing insurgency in South Vietnam between the VC and the South Vietnamese government. There was the ongoing civil war between the North and the South. And then there was the overarching Cold War. The US achieved their Cold War objective (which was to drive a wedge between China and the USSR, specifically by straining the Soviet economy and tightening trade restrictions on China). The actual loss of Vietnam was inconsequential after the Sino-Soviet border conflict and China opening up relations with the US. I think people give way too much focus to what happened in Vietnam after 1969, after which Vietnam's strategic importance cratered given the Sino-Soviet split. US troop drawdown started in 1968 (peaked at 536k in 1968 and was 25k troops by 1972) and it was pretty clear that there was no longer a strong objective for the US to be there once they broke the alignment between China and the USSR. Vietnam was ultimately an inconsequential small state on a peninsula in Southeast Asia that didn't merit any attention outside of the objective of preventing a unified Communist Asia.

Clackamas_river

It is not even that it often goes up or down that much all the time, more like a tree root under a side walk. The 3% down days catch your attention but you need to blow some steam off from time to time. People new to the market have not seen a real crash. Dot Com was the real deal, but then again all you had to do was be able to put a web page up and VC's were tossing cash at any company.

ZealousidealGrab1827

Optimus will soon have mastication and digestion capabilities. Automated robot shit disposal will be the new VC darling in 2030.

Kdcjg

Door dash is public. Not VC money anymore.

NDSU

In many areas, Doordash is operating at a loss using VC money to fund huge promos to get market share

NDSU

I get the distinct feeling Doordash is very different depending on the region. I'd guess the markets they feel they have sufficient market dominance, they're no longer heavily subsidizing the orders Where I live, Doordash gives some absurd deals if you haven't ordered in ~6 months. I just rotate out 6 different accounts and abuse the hell out of their VC money. I wouldn't ever order from Doordash if the total cost was more than going to the restaurant

NDSU

There must be huge variance in rates based on geographic area. Where I live, Doordash is still throwing VC money at people. Often times it's cheaper to order on Doordash than in the restaurant itself If I'm getting take-out, I usually check Doordash to see if it's cheaper for me to order from there than the restaurant itself. Often it is It's a fucked business model because it gets people using the platform with abnormally cheap prices, but I'll take the cheapest price

DerpJungler

They don't need exit liquidity for OpenAI lol. Tender offers and secondaries for shares in OpenAI go absolutely crazy. Source: I work in VC

alanism

My usage would warrant spending $2k+ a month. I wouldn't want to. But if I had to, I would rather than not have it. And if I had VC funding-- I would be willing to pay a full human dev salary if I had the absolute best model and not limited on output.

Gildenstern45

They have to. The VC runs out in 4 1/2 quarters.

LetsStartARebelution

A friend of mine is a partner at a VC firm and I invested with him.

distroyaar

The best hedge funds/mutual funds I have seen normally have their PMs and analyst come from: interest rates/FX desk traders at a bank, equity research analysts, folks with direct industry experience (either operators or consultants), and prop traders (i.e. learnt it themselves). Almost never see IB guys in top funds. IB guys tend to go to private equity, private debt or VC.

insightful_pancake

Be an LP in a VC fund that invested in OpenAI.

SubjectAfraid

VC is looking for bag holders to cash out ASAP… before the AI bubble pops.

kadam_ss

This. The VC community is looking to dump on retail. This is them getting their exit liquidity.

burnshimself

I mean that’s your job as a banker. Your upside is capped at your interest rate, downside is total loan loss of 100%. You have to be constantly managing risk when you run a bank and it pays to have a bit of paranoia worrying about what might disrupt the economy. I wouldn’t go to Masayoshi Son to get his perspective on downside risks to the economy because his job is to be a relentlessly optimistic VC investor, same goes for Jamie Dimon but in the opposite direction

Carbonaraficionada

That's aside from the fact that TSMC basically provides all silicon for the entire mag 7 and this whole AI circlejerk going on right now. China pulls the pin on its invasion, and watch how fast that whole VC-funded AI economy implodes when they can't get chips and can't build them elsewhere, and can't get materials, expertise or machinery to re-locate. The US economy is basically held together by AI stocks right now. It would literally be the perfect timing for China to just launch a drone attack, a few airstrikes to the military areas then fly over with paras, follow up with a few pontoon ships to secure control over Taiwanese ports and airports, then swarm the whole island with military via air and sea. The US f-35's will complicate things for sure, but the numbers are overwhelmingly in favour for the Chinese, and meanwhile wall street drops 25% and the US loses it's silicone. Voilà

mijahon

Dot com was primarily ethereal-all onlne, websites, servers, code and too much VC money. AI requires physical infrastructure, energy sources, high speed chips, server farms, etc..so it's a much bigger commitment. Plus now we have millions of retail traders that have completely changed the dynamic of the markets. Using AI is a way to lay off a ton of people and increase corporate profits. Dot com we had tons of good search engines, over time A/M and sites going under consolidated that down to pretty much just Google. The mag 7, openAI & other tech companies are already pretty consolidated in the space, so they have the capex for the infrastructure and physical elements AI needs. AI has been around a long time, we just didn't call it AI. And it's growth is logarithmic. They just successfully created a quantum computer, magnets are getting strong enough that nuclear fusion might be possible . We're living in exciting times!

chaosdemonhu

Yall buy too much into the hype that these AI companies put out to get another round of VC funding to feed their billions of dollar costs and not enough attention to all of the research and reports from 3rd parties looking into these claims and debunking them. * it performs better at doctors > No significant performance difference was found between AI models and physicians overall (p = 0.10) or non-expert physicians (p = 0.93). However, AI models performed significantly worse than expert physicians (p = 0.007). Several models demonstrated slightly higher performance compared to non-experts, although the differences were not significant. Generative AI demonstrates promising diagnostic capabilities with accuracy varying by model. Although it has not yet achieved expert-level reliability, these findings suggest potential for enhancing healthcare delivery and medical education when implemented with appropriate understanding of its limitations. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-01543-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-025-01543-z) * better therapist ChatGPT literally gave a kid instructions of how to kill himself. Not to mention all of the cases of AI Psychosis. A therapist that makes you mentally ill is not “a better therapist” [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis/amp](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202507/the-emerging-problem-of-ai-psychosis/amp) * AI mid tier programming ability I am so far unimpressed with it. I think this is its wall having been working with it regularly on coding tasks. It’s great at explaining what to do but when it comes to actually being an agent inside my code base I’d rather it not touch any code unless it’s incredibly simple tasks. * AI agent efficiency It’s got a lot of problems as a business use case. Even if you can get your agent to 95%+ percent accuracy for a task, chaining 95+% agents together means the inaccuracy of the final output is compounded. And unlike a human it doesn’t learn the mistakes it took in the process so you’re always rolling a die on whether your agent chain did the job correctly or not with a very low degree of confidence. That also doesn’t account for forced model updates which change behavior and require modifying all the agents. * Turing test Other chat bots have passed the Turing test before it’s a very weak marker of AI at this stage of AI development. It was a good idea in the 50s, but now it has glaringly obvious weaknesses. * this doesn’t scream bubble So a bunch of tech companies all investing in each other to prop up each other’s growth artificially and report “good” numbers to their investors doesn’t scream bubble? The tech is fine, it needs a lot of work and room to develop but as a business none of these AI companies are feasible. Like the internet the real winners will probably be emerging 5-10 years from now just like how Google and Amazon did.

neurorgasm

Not saying it isn't farfetched, but is it categorically different to Amazon, Uber, etc? The VC playbook at this scale is always to make a loss while growing market share, deny competition profit, build a moat of features/loyalty/whatever, and when you're ready, rugpull the users with your new pricing model. By then, users are accustomed to the product and perceive themselves to have no other reasonable choice but to pay up. This already worked with Amazon becoming synonymous with ecommerce, and Uber becoming synonymous with taxis. They wait until 'no Uber' might as well mean 'no taxis' and then flip it into profitability mode. What OpenAI et al are pursuing isn't profit, it's exactly that 'not technically a monopoly but what else are you gonna do' stage -- the necessary precursor of profit at this scale. And revenue numbers as well as interchangeable use of "AI" and "ChatGPT" point to them doing well on that front so far. They are going to do everything they can to make it seem silly, outdated, annoying, and 'poor' to live _without_ this tool. They are going to try to make you feel like a second class, unenhanced citizen, who should be embarrassed. In that sense, pursuing profitability would actually be a relief, because it means they've finished trying to entrench themselves deeper in people's lives and psyches. Dropping a $50/mo requirement or ad responses, and we all go back to ignoring it, would actually be a fucking blessing. Instead, I think they're banking on getting people to think 100, 200, or more a month is a no-brainer. I am sure it's a complete coincidence that most of them also own influence platforms (social media, search, browsers) and simultaneously keep developing ways to generate influential content!

db_deuce

A 501c3 has no shareholders. Even though it is worth maybe 100B, the non-profit will donate 100's of billions for society. This is what a classic successful non-profit will look like 100K in salaries and 100B in legit program grants. This non-profit is likely going to be the most impactful in the world given the amount of ammunition to pay grants with 0 overhead/salary to run. The part that MSFT owns and where the non-profit, Softbank other VC's owns are always for profit but controlled by the non-profit board. So while you can argue how a 500B enterprise is really about public benefit, it is controlled by this board. It's just capitalized with shares instead of partnership allocation. And be that as it may, Anthropic, which is known for strong governance is set up as a public benefit all the same. The law is the law and there is nothing DE and CA or anyone can do to impact the conversion.

JusGimmieMyMuuuhney

is NVDA transitioning to a VC? lol jesus man.

shasta747

NVDA is literally the largest VC today

5haitaan

Integrity due diligence are 100% a part of any PE and semi-large VC investment. It's basically like a private investigator work but on the founders and the company.

duddnddkslsep

ChatGPT wrapper companies losing VC money by the second

etaoin314

how are they connected in potential? AI is an obviously useful technology while quantum computing is a super niche tech. right now there is no known algorithm that a quantum computer can run that has anything to do with AI. Even if quantum computers were many times faster and competitive in more than just quantum accelerated tasks (i.e. shors algorithm) that would still not likely help AI one iota. They are just totally separate techs. thats like saying nuclear fusion and AI are related because fusion reactors could be used to power data centers. sure but that is not a specific benefit in any way. Iam not saying that shorting quantum is smart but only because the market can be irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Sadly there are enough people who think that Quantum AI sounds like a sure fire neat idea, cant lose. and will pour their life savings into it (hell I should start the company and rake in that VC cash)

PTechNM

100%. $197 billion and 62% of total VC investment the last 2 years has been dumped into AI will little to show for it. We have better search engines and editors; not much else. It won't go away but there will be a reset.

nora_sellisa

To be honest, I don't think Amazon is playing the AI game at the same level at any other company. Everyone else started by scraping the internet to make a chatbot and tries to retroactively find a purpose. Amazon was gathering data, tracking and optimizing for years before anyone even heard about an LLM. It may make sense, cost wise, for Amazon to optimize some workers out of their management. Nobody operates LLMs with sustainable profits now. Either they burn money from other venues to fund it (Google, Facebook, Microsoft internally) or burn through VC Money (OpenAI, Anthropic). Everyone else who buys AI from others is effectively building their business on subsidies. AI is being sold below cost to drive up the company valuations, but the actual price of running AI does not drop (It actually rises as they introduce more thinking models) tl;dr LLMs seem to be a bubble that will pop. Amazon might not be affected because their AI solutions are probably specifically tailored to their needs and aren't LLMs.

Inspector330

I never downvote people for disagreeing. I didn't even vote on your post. But I can tell you as a PhD microbiologist, we are only now scratching the surface of any understanding at all. I have seen many companies run by what look like junkies making wild claims. The sad thing is VC money pours into sometimes the absolute worst ideas. We cannot even currently alter the microbiome long term, with the first steps being colonization and persistence of the population. All this data you may be seeing is mainly random data skewed by statistical manipulation with no true meaning. It is easy to draw any conclusion when using statistics. You can make a 1% difference seem like a 100% difference.

Orennji

Opportunity cost is huge if you expected a quick flip. If your mindset is a building a long term, pseudo-VC/private equity portfolio, you would leisurely take your time with small nibbles.

siberian

Two key facts about AI: * Datacenter buildout is committed through end of 2026 * GPU lifespan is 18-36 months right now, meaning at least one more build out is in the cards to upgrade these datacenters before everyone realizes what a shitshow this is. This gets us through mid/end of 2027 before it truly all comes crashing down. That starts to align with the next presidential cycle, so we'll see the government do everything they can to juice the economy. Think low interest rates unlocking trillions in home equity, government stimulus to support tariff ravaged industries, and the continued AI bubble. Its going to be Covid Crazy over the next 18 months. So, yes, its a bubble, but its still early, as odd as that sounds. In '99 and '07 we thought we were immortal and would be rich forever. This is different, everyone knows thats not possible now, everyone realizes this is the ***last big boom before a few decades of pain***, so we are all just trying to maximize our gains to ride out the next 20 years. Wait until VCs realize that all those shitty "AI Startups" they invested in over the last few years that were just OpenAI wrappers are now obsolete because OpenAI and Anthropic are so good now. AI will be THE biggest destroyer of VC value ever seen. Its going to be a fucking bloodbath for those guys, with Altman laughing all the way to the bank. Enjoy it and take your profits. I've paid off 3 cars this year and I'm still up 25% in the last 6 weeks. We are taking the kids to Paris for New Years. Thanks TSMC! So.. take your profits regularly so you don't regret it when it all disappears. We all know the party is ending and we are heading for the 1930s, we just all want to be well equipped with cash when we get there.

theglowpt3

Okay Andreesen (founder of Netscape, legendary VC), Collison brothers (founders of Stripe), endless VCs. Do you really think a group of neckbeards on Reddit understand how difficult it is to do what Elon has done so many times again and again

noblitorator

$GPUS has the possibility of following the path of $IREN which does the same thing (cloud and crypto). Crypto will still be profitable for a while I think. I don't own much crypto, I'm HODL-ing some XRP to see what happens in 25 years. But, as Elon pointed out, Bitcoin (crypto at large too) has an underlying asset of energy expenditures. I like the idea behind that. "It took $XYZ to mine (frame it as manufacture) these Bitcoins so the value is $XYZ". Its not dissimilar from saying it costs XYZ to make this barrel of gas so its value is XYZ amount. Anyway, at the crypto halving rate that is due to halve in 2028 the current mining reward is 3 BTC, by 2028 it's 1.5 BTC. Each coin essentially costs something like 70k in electricity to mine last I knew. I believe that's it's intrinsic minimum value. The question is profitability on top of that minimum. Even if the bottom fell out on it, I think it'd come back. That is until enough of it is lost in lost wallets to be nearly unusable. BTC proponents will say it can be broken down to parts of coins forever. I disagree. There's good scarcity and then there's too far for it to be useful or meaningful. Back to the halving. The 1.5 BTC I think is a grey area for mining profitability. The .75 in 2032 will require new levels of mining efficiency and mega corporation miners to continue (possibly quantum computing which itself, if that happens and makes mining too easy changes things but is probably 2035-2050). Luckily too we'll be down to mining the last whole Bitcoin from 2040 to 2140. So, I think cloud data centers that also mine Bitcoin or crypto in general is still a good idea for their profitability. They've diversified their revenue through mining and cloud and AI services. GPUS is about to divest from their VC arm and let that VC person go do his thing and they'll do their thing. GPUS profitability can happen with mining and the Nvidia powered processing they're also set to offer next year. If they start selling the Bitcoin they accumulated they can probably get to neutral on profits vs losses very soon. At worst they can raid their treasury to stay afloat, but should consider not holding that Bitcoin or at least only hold till it's breaking 125k solidly again.

SqurrrlMarch

Sorry, you're right. I was going from the IPO date, it's VC interest, and management (ie overspending on staff and COGS with aforementioned VC funding until drowning) as an aside, "irregardless" is redundant and superfluous, just say regardless for the love of gawd! anyways, we shall see how it all plays out

softsnugglez

The biggest difference between now and 2000 is the money source. Back then, it was pure VC funding and debt fueling shaky startups with zero revenue. Now, the biggest gains are in established mega-caps that are funding their own growth with actual profits and cash flow. When the gains are backed by cash on the balance sheet, not leverage, it's not a bubble; it's just a highly-concentrated value bet.

jpsreddit85

POET had the mystery investor being Nvidia, but it was just a random Canadian VC investment in the end. Their tech is still interesting so I still have a few long dated calls on it.

KLYNW6055

Nagar is a relieved CEO for 374Water (SCWO) who is a 10% shareholder, likely less now that he's liquidating his shares, which is actually a good thing because he's relinquishing his shares and providing more, albeit diluting via his sales without the company having to dilute by making an offering, this is null compared to an insider diluting. They recently as of July had their president step down from CEO to make room for the new interim CEO Stephen Jones who is well known as a start up savior and major VC that has had success in previous positions. Rendering SCWO in a strong spot with minimal debt, minimal dilution, and distancing themselves from a volatile CEO (Nagar). They recently just had a very very successful demonstration with the DoD and Detroit with their hardware. Awaiting the official results in Q1 2026. The preliminary results released by a third party water testing showed a 98% filtration of micro plastics, heavy metals, and chemicals both industrial and pollutant. Getting into SCWO now, especially at its low price point, will be equitable come Q1 2026. Likely a price target of $2 or more depending on contracts added to their already $1.6 billion pipeline of municipal and defense contracts.

benjyvail

Except they aren’t debt based. Most of this expansion comes from large companies allocating existing profits more towards AI instead of other ventures, or from VC. A smaller part of it does come from debt, but is that not just a natural part of economic activity regardless, firms wouldn’t just stop borrowing if there was no Ai

GeneralGeneral5387

Work in VC and view it under the same lens. Definitely undervalued series B that is about to take off

ion_theatre

Wealth these days is largely made through finance; as another responder to you mentioned, none of Musk’s wealth is really from Tesla car sales. It’s way more efficient to transfer wealth to him to buy 100k of Tesla stock than buy a Cybertruck. That’s incredibly unusual historically, and it’s firmly against this idea of wealth creation. With the top 10% owning most of the financial assets in this country, the their wealth is not tied to wealth creation but speculation and market performance. Recently, there’s been an interesting trend: VC firms fund start ups with shitloads of cash which they burn to maintain an uncompetitive advantage and hope the company either gets big enough to capture a market or is sold to a large tech company who has already captured the market. That’s a rent-seeking model where companies lose billions to gain market dominance then enshittify their product to extract value. It’s not even capitalism. Moreover, 17% of all profits last year(in the US) were in finance, which is not exactly creating wealth. Finance is intended to be a low friction method of delivering resources to the people who need it to make their ideas work. Well, having it nearly be 1/5 of all profits in the US starts to make some questions pop up, like if it’s low friction and if there’s so many people with great ideas, then why has the number of companies declined steadily since the 90s? Let’s circle back to Musk or Ellison real quick; their net worth is roughly equivalent to the GDP of a small nation, even a developed one. Musk is about equivalent to Portugal, and Ellison is about equivalent to Hungary. That, sounds like a nonsense statement. Because it is! There is no way, that either of them has delivered as much value as a developed EU country with 10 million people did in a year. It’s not possible. Do you have any idea how much it takes to run a country? Power, services, food, education, water, health, on and on and on: goods are produced, people supported etc. Elon Musk in comparison is being paid more than his company has made in revenue in its entire existence. That’s not a “they deserve it because they just work smarter.” Listen to some of these ultra-wealthy, they are not serious, driven people, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There’s no shame in that, but since their consumptive needs are met anyway it’s stupid to say they “deserve” their wealth out of some ephemeral value they’ve produced. An aside on stock buybacks, these days, most companies spend their excess cash not on growing but on repurchasing their own stock which drives the price up. This is essentially just a way to transfer money from the business where it can do things like build new products or expand into new markets, and give it back to the investors (but it actually incentivizes selling and short term speculation so not great for those guys either unless they only looking to extract value from the company). So broadly, the whole argument of the rich producing more growth is bullshit, it’s not borne out in the data, and it’s just wrong. Finally, let’s look at this another way. Both Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon claim that US politics are highly influenced by the ultra-wealthy. This means that even if we were to accept a situation as in the past where the wealthy keep their wealth with a sort of social contract to not abuse it in politics (this is a common historical structure, and I really recommend reading As Gods Amongst Men), they’ve broken that end of the deal. So all told, we have a progressively smaller and more concentrated group which is distorting our economy, corrupting our politics, and abusing their wealth, most of which they make by extracting more value from the government (see how contracts often get done or how favorable laws accumulate wealth at the upper end) and by extension, you. It is entirely possible to have a system of capitalism which incentives hard work, where wealth doesn’t automatically accumulate at an accelerating rate to the extremely wealthy. It’s not reasonable to have singular individuals worth as much as the annual output of nation states.

Far_Piglet_9596

Lmao you’re confusing different stages of a company’s lifecycle. PE ratio and earnings growth are core valuation metrics for established, cash-flow-generating businesses. VC-funded startups, on the other hand, are not profitable yet; they’re valued based on future expected earnings and growth potential, not current P/E. That doesn’t make P/E or earnings growth ‘useless’; it just means they don’t apply yet because there are no earnings to measure. Once those same tech startups mature and start generating profit (see: Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Nvidia), guess what everyone values them on? P/E ratio, EPS growth, Cash flow growth If you think investors are putting billions into companies without eventually expecting strong earnings growth to justify valuations, you fundamentally don’t understand how equity markets or DCF models work. Even VC valuations are implicitly based on expected earnings growth down the line. They’re just taking an early bet.” Anyways, have fun losing money if youre this confident despite being ignorant as to how finance works, dunning-kruger

BaronofUbersreik

That’s why tech companies who get VC funding have those key metrics? Genius

LessAd8017

Fama-French identified that mid-cap stocks were the best for growth. Penny stocks are toxic assets usually held by mismanaged companies. It doesn't mean that there's no value in the assets *if* the management is fixed but that's a longshot without being some kind of PE pirate or VC who just flat out gets pissed.

Barlored

Coin is deploying money into worthless no revenue companies like some VC fund, and NVDA with their investments buying their own supply while having no product or viable business strategy. Surely this is a good sign.

Rav_3d

>I personally think most of the bloodbath (if any) will occur in the VC world where hundreds of startups with VC money have insane valuations. And we are likely years away from that. I've never seen more bubble talk. Not even in the actual dot-com bubble.

50_61S-----165_97E

It will be a gradual decline, technological advancement will slow, reports will come out showing it's not actually creating value for business, big players will fail to monetise consumers and become profitable. Eventually the VC dries up and the house of cards collapses.

EncrustedBarboach

This makes me glad I grew up on Spongebob 

MusicCurious9297

My issue with HIMS is that there are very few barriers to entry. They sell generic meds and nothing prevents 10, 100 or whatever new VC funded companies from spinning up and chipping away market share or undercutting their pricing structure.

reveil

Because the math doe not math. AI companies are spending a fortune on hardware and electricity and don't have revenue to back it up. They are selling services at a major loss and coasting on VC money hoping that a breakthrough will magically create a mythical AGI to bring them to explosive profitability. Thing is things are starting to plateau. Models are not getting much better despite hardware advancement. There are voices of experts that the LLMs as a technology may be a stopgap and ultimately dead end. What would replace LLMs is just a research topic but one thing clear is that it would require exponentially more hardware and electricity. All this means there is no guarantee AI companies will ever get profitable. In a gold rush the one selling shovels profits the most though. And Nvidia is now the most valuable company on the planet. Nvidia though knows this is fragile and is spending significant resources to be able to pivot from pure AI hardware to robotics in the not so far future.

Pathogenesls

There's a bubble in VC funding for AI startups. There's no bubble in the wider stock market.

GeeBee72

Silicon Valley Bank failed because they held on to debt that was not interest rate neutral as an asset. When interest rates spiked the value of these assets plummeted and the bank posted a loss of around 1.8 billion as they sold off assets to cover existing debt obligations. Most of the account holders were heavily leveraged biotech and IT startups who dumped their VC cash into their accounts without realizing that their balances weren’t covered by the FDIC insurance limit of $250,000 per account. So a few large account holders pulled their assets, when SVB realized they didn’t have the reserve they needed, they tried to raise capital but they weren’t able to raise enough and then everything went public and a run on the bank basically ran them into the ground because they couldn’t simply liquidate their holdings without posting even greater losses by boosting liquidity across the markets and causing even more damage to other institutions that were riding the thin edge and of insolvency. The only real Crypto issue was Silvergate bank which collapsed after SVB because everyone got spooked with how these regional banks were being run and how effective their risk management was (hint: risk management wasn’t their strong suit). The FTX debacle was November 2022, SVB was March 2022.

Jeroen_Jrn

Okay, it's based on an overvalued VC funding round.

just_for_shitposts

Nvidia moons because there is demand. There is demand because Open AI. But there is money for this circlejerk because of MS and Altman's VC gang. IMHO MS is the baby momma.

MrGulio

Hey now. Thats very different from the current entrepreneurs milking VC money with AI companies.

TonyzTone

Like the guys running up VC tabs through the 2010s weren’t scammers.

Hot-Conversation-437

very few self made guys in AI. requires loads of capital/ connections to VC’s

DFW_BjornFree

Honestly I traded it from under $2 to over $10 then new management brought in their ycombinator / VC mentality and I got the ick.  They should be poaching quants and devs from JPMC/ microsoft in places like Ohio and Texas not paying out the ass for devs in SF and Miami. 

Inevitable_Meat_1224

The future is going to be plant- based, I am why Google was created on Sand Hill Road in a bet between Brin (an Israeli Jewish Russian, and VC Doug Leone… about my genius. I won a Nobel in Economic Science Food pricing being covered up by Colleagues at Harvard and jealous Harvard Society of Fellows / Andover JDs from Princeton such that the United Ststes fell. When I was to be notified of one Nobel Outside the field award at Princeton faculty Club they staged an electromagnetic attack. UK doubles ( psych unit) at the Princeton Board removed the US Nobel April 2021, and staged an Andover Bosrd meeting later that day to cover it up. I remember the day— was making a vegan Reuben sandwich that day with juniper berries and brown sugar. Beyond Meat is a strategic interest, not just a company which was subject to aberrant selloff. The future is in exact taste texture replication molecular level casein 3 D printing, entirely replacing animal cruelty food and dairy by 2035. The British make their money sabotaging the IUS on both sides of US strategic positions. The joined the Israelis to create 9/11 over the Wales title and DNA. I know because the mtDNA was mine, now in a Montecito estate theft using criminal black prosthetics after Oprah Winfrey murdered my mother in Election week 2008. The United States ended that day. The UK and Oprah then made a treasonous deal to cover the murder/ robotics up: the blacks could steal and put Meaghan Markle as a black person, in a fraud line that was the 9/11 motive. The Windsors died in 20-6, they knew they were fraud, and that they were agents of the Jews, and enemies of the US.

Hot-Celebration5855

Are any of these companies going to have a hard time paying though? Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Oracle, etc are some of the most cash rich and stable companies in the world. They all have core legacy businesses they print money. OpenAI meanwhile can also fund itself easily. Every VC in the world would cut them a cheque, not to mention Microsoft and others.

_ECMO_

OpenAI is absolutely no way of paying and building everything they promised. And there is zero chance they will make billions even a decade into the future. The only way they could turn profitable is to (a) either charge horrendous prices (b) put an insane amount of ads into ChatGPT or (c) stop innovating and offer cheap old models. But in that second they lose almost every user they have. And at least Google has enough profits to easily last longer and overtake their users.  So if they try to become profitable they will most likely die. If they continue as they do now they will never cease burning billions (although with things like Sora 2 and its $5 a video cost I wouldn't be surprised if they start losing far more). Not even the most insane VC will play this game forever. If they somehow managed to build the data centers they have no money for that's not where it ends as all of that immense amount of GPUs will be obsolete in three years and dead by 5. So there is neither lasting infrastructure (as there was with dot com bubble) nor an end to the ungodly spending. Short of OpenAI literally building God (which won´t happen for obvious reasons) there is nothing that can prevent this catastrophe.