Re:Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B
by delusional on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @10:32AM
(#41446291)
This explains what would need to be true for this to make sense, but i doesn't explain how it makes sense right now.
How is this going to ever pay the investors back? How is it going to raise more money at such an insane valuation?
I just dont see how you justify such a crazy valuation from day 1 financially.
Re:Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B
by SpicyLemonZest on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @11:13AM
(#41446727)
The company's pitch isn't exactly a secret. The one and only thing they're planning to do is build an ML model smarter than a human being, which would be immensely valuable for a wide variety of tasks that currently require human input. You see a lot of commentators jumping through hoops to deny that anyone could believe this is possible in the near future, but clearly they and their investors do.
In this case, everyone knows it takes hundreds of millions to train models. So I'm investors are essentially rolling the dice on an extremely well-regarded team. And if it takes about a billion just to get off the ground, the valuation would need to at least be in the couple billion range to make it worth it for employees to work there.
That feels very different than say selling a company where founders are cashing out. In that case, the business should expect to meaningful contribute to revenue, and quickly.