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OpenAI's new $340 Billion Price Tag

OpenAI's new $340 Billion Price Tag

Christopher Webster
January 31, 2025

Startups:

Is OpenAI still a startup:

OpenAI is in talks to raise another $40 billion at a $340 billion valuation. This brings the question. Is OpenAI really still a startup? While it may seem unlikely OpenAI is still a startup even with the enormous amount of capital already poured into the company. Why do they keep raising venture money and not go public? Well they kinda sorta are still trying to convert out of a non-profit and into a for-profit company. If they are successful then they may finally be able to go public and liquidate some of their investors. They are also receiving a lot of deserved criticism being a closed source AI company with DeepSeek’s open source model beating them in some of the AI benchmark tests. What more will we see from OpenAI this year?

Gene testing:

Ever wonder what problems your genetics would suggest you’re prone to? Well Nucleus Genomics has the ability to tell you. The startup was founded by 25 year-old Kian Sadeghi because his cousin suddenly passed away one day from an unknown genetic disorder. Now the company has raised a $14 million Series A. The company is backed by investors like Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Balaji Srinivasan and SpaceX alum Achal Upadhyaya have all rallied behind Sadeghi’s vision for widely available genetic testing. Kian’s vision for the company is to one day have genetic testing help doctors personalize medicine and medical care for each individual. Will we live in a world that everyone knows their genetics and what diseases they are prone to?

Venture:

New wave of Venture Capitalist:

Factorial Capital is embracing the same investing thesis that a new wave of venture capitalist are pursuing. This new investment thesis is that venture capitalist are not as good at investing as founders. Just like VC firm Powerset, Factorial Capital is using founders as sourcing partners. They select founders within certain industries and have these founders bring them deals. The firm has a number of successful sourcing partners to bring them deals. Their first sourcing partner was Clement Delangue, CEO of AI startup Hugging Face. Now the firm is announcing some of its other partners: Giphy co-founder Alex Chung, Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Hugging Face co-founders Julien Chaumond and Thomas Wolf, Fast Forward Labs co-founder Hilary Mason, and Beme co-founder Matt Hackett. Will we see these new VC firms out perform the more traditional VC firms?

Big Tech:

Intel receives $2.2B in grants:

Semiconductor giant Intel Corporation has already received $2.2 billion in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce through the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act.The interim CEO Dave Zinsner has confirmed that the company received $1.1 billion at the end of 2024 and the remaining $1.1 billion in January of this year. If Intel reaches certain milestones that will receive another $5.66 billion. They were rewarded a total of $7.86 billion in federal grants to build semiconductors. Intel has been struggling in recent years. Will these federal grants help bring them to the top of their industry?

DeepSeek causing trouble in U.S. federal government:

DeepSeek’s terms of service explicitly states it stores user data on Chinese servers and that it governs that data under Chinese law. This means that all this data goes to country’s intelligence agencies. You would think that this would stop federal employees from using DeepSeek on their work computers, however this was not the case. U.S. Department of Defense workers fell for the hype around the new AI model and connected their work computers to the Chinese servers. Now in a scramble the Pentagon has started to block DeepSeek on some of its network. Will China steal some state secrets from this blunder?