If AI business is greatest business ever, why are they doing IPO?
I understand need for more money and more compute. But if they are so advance and great. Why are their own private investors and private share holders letting this multiple trillion $ opportunity go away? Private markets and family offices are big at $trillion level. Sure they could raise until Z letter in private rounds, stay private like some companies be able to for for their entire time? Why sell ownership of the greatest business ever created?
Standard Oil never went public, they had more than 10% of the GDP at top and true, self advancing AI would worth multiple times higher? There is not even monopoly breakdown risk because there are already multiple competitors.
Or simply put, they don't believe the current valuation justifies significant future growth. They need to exit their position, especially given the risk of volatility around the current valuation?
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 23.9 ms ] thread- Buying allies. If you make a lot of other people rich, they will probably become your biggest boosters. Might not be a bad idea to have some rich allies rooting for you. And you might need some political favors in the future.
Using a dual class stock structure, you could even retain complete control of your own company while gaining partial or complete control of others with the proceeds of the IPO. My understanding is that private companies usually don't have dual class share structures until they are preparing to IPO. By IPOing in this manner, you are giving patronage to the investing public without ceding control of the company's assets and operations, in exchange for a boatload of cash right now.