> OpenAI has no long-term viability and they're desperately hoping for some new breakthrough to reinvent their business model before the VC money faucets turn off for good.
If a startup is riding a hype cycle and is one of two leaders in the global industry with unreal growth numbers, they can IPO whenever they want. The incentives lean toward doing an IPO before the hype runs out, not delaying it.
If they were worried about running out of VC money, going to the public (the P in IPO) would be the move.
Companies don't actually have to go public quickly or even at all, even though that's been drilled into us as the only goal of every investor-backed startup.
Which is why Spacex was so rushed, and why they insisted on new rules for early exits and inclusion in the Nasdaq 100 index.
I'm not certain OpenAI or Anthropic have a viable business, either, but Spacex definitely pulled a massive scam.
I know it would be unworkable ripe-for-abuse, but for a moment I wished there was no tax if you sold from an index fund that broke its core rules and operating principles to invest in another that preserved them.
> If they were worried about running out of VC money, going to the public (the P in IPO) would be the move.
Yes? They were geared up for IPO this year until pushing it back. See all the marketing shenanigans around solving mathematics for this month's flavour. They have a balancing act to manage between the hype and the reality of the business.