> "Offload a massive illiquid investment onto the public so that investors make their fund"

This is what it looks like to me. Crazy growth numbers to bump the valuation and public interest, go public, gradually let the company shift into irrelevancy after major owners have cashed out.

The smoke and mirrors part here is that no one except the AI research community knows what the ML/AI capabilities will look like in 5 years. What that means is that the general public is probably going to eat up this IPO. Probably a better move to hedge by buying Microsoft, but whatevs.