Comment by mrhottakes
3 hours ago
Transactions like that happen all the time and are not problematic if handled legally. Any of the interested parties could have sued over it, but none have.
3 hours ago
Transactions like that happen all the time and are not problematic if handled legally. Any of the interested parties could have sued over it, but none have.
The interested parties would be taxpayers. I think some groups are trying to look into it.
The issue is that they did R&D as a charity, donations to which are tax deductible, there may also be other benefits to being a charity during R&D but that’s a big one, then once the thing works, setup a for profit, sell ip at “fair value”, get some investment, then things are ready for business.
I read there’s no statute of limitations on a tax issue like this, so I guess it might be hanging over them indefinitely.
I’m not a big taxation and government fan, they’d probably just waste the money anyways. It does seem unfair OpenAI gets to use this loophole though, unless all companies can make their R&D investment tax deductible, and get any other benefits of this setup.
Or more specifically: One just did sue, but lost because he waited too long.
Because they got to participate in the early investment in the for profit entity.
> Early Angels (Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, and others): Approximately $10 million invested, current value $1.4 billion. That corresponds to a return of around 140x.
https://www.trendingtopics.eu/openai-cap-table-leak/