Comment by fragmede

17 hours ago

OpenAI is worth whatever someone will pay for them. Overpriced and underpriced are just words. If someone's willing to pay an amount for something, that's what it's worth.

Well, yes but not really.

I could buy a local sweetshop for a 100 billion dollars, just because I might do that, that doesn't mean it's actually worth that.

  • On the contrary, you would be demonstrating that, to at least one buyer, it was worth that. By definition.

    I think the argument you’re really looking to contradict is this: if 1% of a company is worth $1B to somebody, then somebody would pay $100B for the whole company. That does not follow (and indeed the acquisition price of a company is almost never exactly its “market valuation”).

    • > and indeed the acquisition price of a company is almost never exactly its “market valuation”

      The acquisition price is almost always significantly more than its market value. The reason is that if you start buying shares on the open market each transaction of yours will raise the stock price, and eventually you will price yourself out of the purchase.

      So what buyers do is negotiate directly with the board and propose an inflated price that >50% of shareholders are okay with.

    • In some sense I would argue that it is the next highest bid that determine the worth. I.e. what the buyer could hope to resell for.

    • No.

      You are assuming that the money that I buy the sweet shop for is what I evaluate the value of the sweet shop to be worth. That's not necessarily true.

      You're also assuming I'm not insane.

      If I offer to buy an apple from you for 1 trillion dollars because I believe consuming that specific apple will make me a god, that apple is not actually worth 1 trillion dollars.

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