OpenAI just pulled in $3 billion from retail investors, part of a $122 billion round that values the company at $852 billion. Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank are leading. This is the first time retail money has piled into an AI lab at this scale before IPO. The valuation is absurd on paper, but the structure matters more: this is about getting ordinary investors hooked on the AI narrative before the company goes public. It's a pre-IPO hype machine disguised as a funding round.
Today's signals reveal a market split: funding rounds are hitting religious fervour levels (OpenAI at $852B, Whoop at $10B) whilst actual products are collapsing or pivoting to subscriptions to survive. The pattern is clear.
Investors are betting on narrative and network effects, not product quality or user satisfaction. We're in the late stage of a hype cycle where the money keeps flowing upwards whilst the products keep failing downwards.
For people who’d rather be early and wrong than late and safe.