junesix

The risk is not hardware launch per se. It's the unresolved lawsuit from a powerful company that's hanging over OpenAI and what may be revealed if the case goes to trial and discovery. All that will get priced in by institutional investors. If OpenAI is shopping the IPO, it's likely among the first questions large investors performing due diligence will ask.

The worst scenario is OpenAI tells investors that the risks are low, there's nothing damaging, the costs are immaterial, and tries to push forward. Then the case goes to trial and emails, Slack messages, documents are revealed in discovery that run counter to everything OpenAI told investors. Court issues an injunction, awards damages, OpenAI has to dismiss execs, secondary lawsuits are filed, existing investors release letters they had no idea, underwriter backs out, etc. That outcome could crush an IPO.

I don't see Demis becoming CEO. He's a scientist and researcher. He wouldn't want to be bogged down by minutiae of corporate politics, org structure, government relations, mobile hardware, etc. Chair lets him have authority to explore any path of interest without overhead of operations.

It's not that people forget that Intel exists, it's that they are effectively irrelevant to the foundry business.

> Becoming a meaningful customer of Samsung or Intel is very risky: it takes years to get a chip working on a new process, which hardly seems worth it if that process might not be as good, and if the company offering the process definitely isn’t as customer service-centric as TSMC.

TSMC is a reliable supplier and there are no doubts about conflicts of interest. The same cannot be said for Intel and Samsung. If Intel's AI chip business faces chip shortages (like what may already be happening), can their foundry be depended on to ship your chips?

No one wants to be the idiot who staked their future on Intel and then gets wiped out when Intel doesn't deliver.

It's only gotten attention because it's "ChatGPT". If it was any other vendor, this would have slipped by without a blip.