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... you think this is vindicating Ed Zitron? The dude is on a spree claiming the bubble will burst any time soon [1]. In fact Ed Zitron predicted that OpenAI wi

... you think this is vindicating Ed Zitron? The dude is on a spree claiming the bubble will burst any time soon [1]. In fact Ed Zitron predicted that OpenAI will IPO sooner and not later [2]! This whole post is yet again another thing that he got wrong. [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ed+zitron+bubble https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ed+zitron+bubbl... [2] https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-cfo-news https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-cfo-news > It's clear that both OpenAI and Anthropic are rushing toward a public offering so that their CEOs can cash out, and that their underlying economics are equal parts problematic and worrying.

therobots927 4mo ago
OAI canceling an IPO this year a week after he released their dogshit financials is not a coincidence and yes it does vindicate him. He’s not shorting the market or calling a top. He’s saying that the bubble will pop because the underlying business model is and always will have a NEGATIVE ROI. Unless you’re speculating on semiconductor stocks the difference is irrelevant. Do me a favor and tell me how much of the 1,000,000,000,000 spent / committed to a datacenter buildout has been returned to shareholders / creditors?
- simianwords 4mo ago
  1. they didn't cancel their IPO and they were deliberate about having the option to time their IPO 2. he has tried over and over again to predict the bubble and peak [1] [2] [3] 3. that OpenAI is filing for an IPO next year is no vindication of Ed's claim when he specifically predicted the opposite (as I showed in the above comment) 4. OpenAI filing for an IPO next year has no bearing on its fundamentals 5. on Datacenters: Anthropic had to lease it from Elon's datacenter because they were too short on capacity and every one was complaining that their limits were too low [1] Ed on 2024, "threaten to begin a collapse that I’ve been predicting since March" https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ [2] Ed on 2024, "three quarters to prove itself before the apocalypse comes" https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ [3] Ed on 2024, "things are beginning to collapse" https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ Edit: the quality of discussion in this website is annoying sometimes.get downvoted for good faith discussion
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  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Edit: the quality of discussion in this website is annoying sometimes.get downvoted for good faith discussion Ignore it and don't do this: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > OAI canceling an IPO this year a week after he released their dogshit financials There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility. > Do me a favor and tell me how much of the 1,000,000,000,000 spent / committed to a datacenter buildout has been returned to shareholders / investors? If Anthropic also delays its IPO, you'll have a point.
  - therobots927 4mo ago
    SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money. Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference). Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money What? How? SpaceX loses oodles of money. It's trading above its IPO, and just filled an oversubscribed bond deal. > Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious Zitron has a faithful following. He isn't a broadly-influential analyst.
      - therobots927 4mo ago
        You said: “ There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility.” What exactly do you think “volatility” means in this context?
    - jsnell 4mo ago
      > Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference). They did not.
      - lovich 4mo ago
jrflowers 4mo ago
I like that people will post stuff like “Ed Zitron is always wrong! Look at this wrong claim he made!” and then link to him not making that claim at all. “Rushing toward a public offering so that their CEOs can cash out” is not a prediction of a specific time to IPO, and is supported by OpenAI’s own public statement two months after that was published https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/ https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/
- simianwords 4mo ago
  I don't even know what you are trying to say, I opened your link > We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best. So... OpenAI has specifically said that they have not decided on the timing and it may be a while. And now we have news that they are waiting till next year. What do you think is supported by whom? Being more clear and concrete helps the discussion.
  - jrflowers 4mo ago
    >it may be a while Or sooner. It says sooner or later. It only means “later” if you don’t read the “sooner” part. Choosing to read selectively isn’t One Weird Trick To Own A Blogger. “This post about submitting a draft S1 to the SEC is proof that they don’t want to go public” lmao
    - lovich 4mo ago
      > Choosing to read selectively isn’t One Weird Trick To Own A Blogger. I mean it’s pretty obvious that the pro AI as an industry wide replacement people think it is One Weird Trick. I’ve still yet to see any of them articulate how they are going to reach profitability without resorting to the meme of projecting that their baby has doubled size in 6 months so is projected to reach 10.5 trillion pounds by the age of 10.
CodingJeebus 4mo ago
OpenAI did confidentially file their S-1, which costs a ton of money to put together for the bankers and regulators to review. They did test the market and it looks like either the banks or people directly around Altman told him not to move forward. That doesn't mean Zitron was wrong about OpenAI IPOing. They took steps in that direction and then decided not to move forward. That's not his fault. As far as the bubble bursting soon, we are starting to see some pretty concerning signals. The South Korean stock market triggered trading circuit breakers twice earlier this week to stop a runaway selloff in the tech sector. For reference, circuit breakers have only been triggered in the Korean market 10 times in history, and only 5 times ever in the US markets. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/kospi-falls-8-triggers-circuit-061212686.html https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/kos...
- dofm 4mo ago
  FWIW I think there's a "Y2K never happened" future here, where the bubble never bursts (in the sense of some insane market valuation proving to be lunatic) but everyone does what they can to make sure it doesn't burst on them, and they pull back and the bubble just deflates. Take for example the action on SPACs that made the "SPAC everything" era end.
  - edoceo 4mo ago
    I'm also feeling like that, not a quick burst like dot-com but a deflating bubble over next 24 months. During which AI costs rise and IPO valuation comes down. Maybe my memory of dot-com is fuzzy (likely) and perhaps I didn't see early warning (or even didn't know how to see it). I feel like it all transpired over 3 months. And for those of us in Seattle the "death-knell" was the Nisqually quake that made much of Pioneer Square unsafe to occupy for a while.
    - dofm 4mo ago
      One of the things that really strikes me is that there are so many people talking about how great the frontier models are but there's nowhere near as many people talking about open weights and local models. There is this huge knowledge gap here about what the local models could do in terms of consumer queries with a tiny bit of agentic support. If more people could tinker with local models and see what they can do, I think there would be far less belief that only the big two/three hold the keys to the kingdom and far more that the future is a bit more distributed. On that basis I am always on the lookout for coverage that gets into this — Cal Newport touches on it a bit — because I think it is one of the deflationary factors, as is the quality of open weights models, which in turn is why Anthropic is now getting credulous journalists to write about "distillation attacks". Re: the dot-com crash, I was in the UK working for an internet startup at the time though I was on a sort of health break/sabbatical at the time of the pets.com crash, so I was reading and researching, and while I do remember the coverage of their valuation being insane, and agreeing with that, I also think it did not have such a long run-up. We did know in 1998 and 1999 that Broadvision's valuation seemed absolutely insane, for example, and that some e-commerce developer and design startups were radically overvalued, but what is so different about this time is how much more broadly things were distributed then. So many players. Even the major duality (which was Microsoft vs ABM — a loose coalition of "Anyone But Microsoft") had many more players. Whereas now… it feels like a prequel to Rollerball.

therobots927 4mo ago

OAI canceling an IPO this year a week after he released their dogshit financials is not a coincidence and yes it does vindicate him. He’s not shorting the market or calling a top. He’s saying that the bubble will pop because the underlying business model is and always will have a NEGATIVE ROI. Unless you’re speculating on semiconductor stocks the difference is irrelevant. Do me a favor and tell me how much of the 1,000,000,000,000 spent / committed to a datacenter buildout has been returned to shareholders / creditors?

simianwords 4mo ago
1. they didn't cancel their IPO and they were deliberate about having the option to time their IPO 2. he has tried over and over again to predict the bubble and peak [1] [2] [3] 3. that OpenAI is filing for an IPO next year is no vindication of Ed's claim when he specifically predicted the opposite (as I showed in the above comment) 4. OpenAI filing for an IPO next year has no bearing on its fundamentals 5. on Datacenters: Anthropic had to lease it from Elon's datacenter because they were too short on capacity and every one was complaining that their limits were too low [1] Ed on 2024, "threaten to begin a collapse that I’ve been predicting since March" https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ [2] Ed on 2024, "three quarters to prove itself before the apocalypse comes" https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ [3] Ed on 2024, "things are beginning to collapse" https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ Edit: the quality of discussion in this website is annoying sometimes.get downvoted for good faith discussion
- deleted 4mo ago
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- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Edit: the quality of discussion in this website is annoying sometimes.get downvoted for good faith discussion Ignore it and don't do this: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> OAI canceling an IPO this year a week after he released their dogshit financials There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility. > Do me a favor and tell me how much of the 1,000,000,000,000 spent / committed to a datacenter buildout has been returned to shareholders / investors? If Anthropic also delays its IPO, you'll have a point.
- therobots927 4mo ago
  SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money. Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference). Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > SpaceX demonstrated that the public markets have a limited tolerance for a multi-trillion dollar company that doesn’t make any money What? How? SpaceX loses oodles of money. It's trading above its IPO, and just filled an oversubscribed bond deal. > Put these two together and I think the conclusion is pretty obvious Zitron has a faithful following. He isn't a broadly-influential analyst.
    - therobots927 4mo ago
      You said: “ There is zero evidence of any causal link between him and this. The obvious one, instead, is SpaceX's volatility.” What exactly do you think “volatility” means in this context?
  - jsnell 4mo ago
    > Ed’s leaks demonstrated that OAI doesn’t make money (even on inference). They did not.
    - lovich 4mo ago

jrflowers 4mo ago

I like that people will post stuff like “Ed Zitron is always wrong! Look at this wrong claim he made!” and then link to him not making that claim at all. “Rushing toward a public offering so that their CEOs can cash out” is not a prediction of a specific time to IPO, and is supported by OpenAI’s own public statement two months after that was published https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/ https://openai.com/index/openai-submits-confidential-s-1/

simianwords 4mo ago
I don't even know what you are trying to say, I opened your link > We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best. So... OpenAI has specifically said that they have not decided on the timing and it may be a while. And now we have news that they are waiting till next year. What do you think is supported by whom? Being more clear and concrete helps the discussion.
- jrflowers 4mo ago
  >it may be a while Or sooner. It says sooner or later. It only means “later” if you don’t read the “sooner” part. Choosing to read selectively isn’t One Weird Trick To Own A Blogger. “This post about submitting a draft S1 to the SEC is proof that they don’t want to go public” lmao
  - lovich 4mo ago
    > Choosing to read selectively isn’t One Weird Trick To Own A Blogger. I mean it’s pretty obvious that the pro AI as an industry wide replacement people think it is One Weird Trick. I’ve still yet to see any of them articulate how they are going to reach profitability without resorting to the meme of projecting that their baby has doubled size in 6 months so is projected to reach 10.5 trillion pounds by the age of 10.

CodingJeebus 4mo ago

OpenAI did confidentially file their S-1, which costs a ton of money to put together for the bankers and regulators to review. They did test the market and it looks like either the banks or people directly around Altman told him not to move forward. That doesn't mean Zitron was wrong about OpenAI IPOing. They took steps in that direction and then decided not to move forward. That's not his fault. As far as the bubble bursting soon, we are starting to see some pretty concerning signals. The South Korean stock market triggered trading circuit breakers twice earlier this week to stop a runaway selloff in the tech sector. For reference, circuit breakers have only been triggered in the Korean market 10 times in history, and only 5 times ever in the US markets. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/kospi-falls-8-triggers-circuit-061212686.html https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/world-indices/articles/kos...

dofm 4mo ago
FWIW I think there's a "Y2K never happened" future here, where the bubble never bursts (in the sense of some insane market valuation proving to be lunatic) but everyone does what they can to make sure it doesn't burst on them, and they pull back and the bubble just deflates. Take for example the action on SPACs that made the "SPAC everything" era end.
- edoceo 4mo ago
  I'm also feeling like that, not a quick burst like dot-com but a deflating bubble over next 24 months. During which AI costs rise and IPO valuation comes down. Maybe my memory of dot-com is fuzzy (likely) and perhaps I didn't see early warning (or even didn't know how to see it). I feel like it all transpired over 3 months. And for those of us in Seattle the "death-knell" was the Nisqually quake that made much of Pioneer Square unsafe to occupy for a while.
  - dofm 4mo ago
    One of the things that really strikes me is that there are so many people talking about how great the frontier models are but there's nowhere near as many people talking about open weights and local models. There is this huge knowledge gap here about what the local models could do in terms of consumer queries with a tiny bit of agentic support. If more people could tinker with local models and see what they can do, I think there would be far less belief that only the big two/three hold the keys to the kingdom and far more that the future is a bit more distributed. On that basis I am always on the lookout for coverage that gets into this — Cal Newport touches on it a bit — because I think it is one of the deflationary factors, as is the quality of open weights models, which in turn is why Anthropic is now getting credulous journalists to write about "distillation attacks". Re: the dot-com crash, I was in the UK working for an internet startup at the time though I was on a sort of health break/sabbatical at the time of the pets.com crash, so I was reading and researching, and while I do remember the coverage of their valuation being insane, and agreeing with that, I also think it did not have such a long run-up. We did know in 1998 and 1999 that Broadvision's valuation seemed absolutely insane, for example, and that some e-commerce developer and design startups were radically overvalued, but what is so different about this time is how much more broadly things were distributed then. So many players. Even the major duality (which was Microsoft vs ABM — a loose coalition of "Anyone But Microsoft") had many more players. Whereas now… it feels like a prequel to Rollerball.