Money did exchange hands but it had to come from somewhere, OpenAI doesn’t have 78bln just lying around. Someone somewhere took debt so OpenAI could pay that price and OpenAI is planning on paying back that debt with AMD stock. That why I said the simple answer is that the people buying AMD stock are the ones paying for those chips. But these things don’t happen in an instance, they take time which is why I said the complex answer is that nobody really knows who is going to pay it back. As a simplistic example, while the “dump” of AMD stocks hasn’t happened someone can borrow money against the overpriced AMD stock. Now, if whoever gave the actual money to OpenAI comes asking for their 78bln back and OpenAI doesn’t have it they will dump the AMD stocks to pay it back and then the person who used AMD stocks as collateral will be asked “Your collateral is now useless, give me more collateral or pay me back” and that money will be found elsewhere until someone goes broke and the debt gets defaulted. Of course that won’t happen as long as nobody comes asking for the spent money.
In my eyes this deal is a speculative investment leveraging debt. OpenAI itself doesn’t have the debt but it is somewhere because the actual liquidated money had to come from somewhere. And there is speculative investment with the hopes of AMD stocks going up enough to offset that debt. The 78bln might not end up as debt for OpenAI, but it might end up as a different debt for the loans that used propped up AMD stock as collateral. IMO it doesn’t really matter where exactly the debt ends up because if the bubble pops AMD stocks are also going to take a hit and someone somewhere is going to end up paying for the debt that was caused by this 78bln deal.
AFAIU, the GPUs are free for OpenAI. They will sell their free stock to pay AMD for GPUs. OpenAI is already on the hook for over $1T in other commitments, and debt will be very expensive for them.
the simple answer is that the people buying AMD stock are the ones paying for those chips
In my eyes this deal is a speculative investment leveraging debt.
But so you have to pick one. Unless you’re suggesting that all the day traders and retirement funds and investment funds are buying or already holding AMD bought it all with credit cards. Which is not the case, which is why this isn’t debt.
Ask yourself - If it’s debt, then who is the creditor? Who holds the loan paperwork? What rate did they get? What’s the collateral? None of those things are true here.
Stock value isn’t real any more than the value of gold or silver or bitcoin, but it’s all relative to the value of the stock when sold. But it being sold is the point. The stocks are worth money. Real actual money. If the market hits a correction - as other more bubble-like parts of the AI industry and the current general economic shitpile are likely to afford us all in the next few years - then OpenAI and NVIDIA and AMD won’t be carved up and sold for parts after a bankruptcy by a bank because they’re still able to sell the stocks to fund payroll. As long as no one sells off a ton of stock quickly and the stock value doesn’t collapse, then it’s simply a risky circular a bet on themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an innovation in stupidity and shortsightedness. But call it what it is, which is not debt.
Where would OpenAI get 78bln to pay AMD? It’s very unlikely that money would come from their existing revenue streams, so it most likely would come from either external investors or a loan. Loan obviously comes with debt so let’s say it came from an external investors? But where did they get that kind of money? Investors rarely have billions just sitting in the bank so they had to liquidize somehow. Maybe they sold some of their non-liquid assets, but most likely they took loans against their assets (because loaning is cheaper than selling) which means we’re back to there being debt somewhere.
the simple answer is that the people buying AMD stock are the ones paying for those chips
That is the simple answer because people would buy the stock, stock price would go up, OpenAI 10% would end up being worth 78bln, OpenAI dumps the stock and that money goes back to whoever financed the 78bln. Debt would get paid off and no additional debt would exist (except for people who bought the stock without having the money to buy the stock). But that’s a simplistic way of viewing this whole ordeal.
In my eyes this deal is a speculative investment leveraging debt.
I don’t see an issue here. In my eyes there is debt created to accumulate 78bln and the speculative part is using AMD stock to cover the debt. If the pump and dump fails would there not be debt?
Debt would be SoftBank giving OpenAI $78 B in cash and then in a year or two asking for payments of cash back.
This investment/stock circular thing is like if you were building a house and lived next to a brick yard, and convinced the brick yard owner to give you bricks to build your house. Your house would be the demonstration of how lovely the bricks are, and in return you’ll give them 10% of the title of your property. If you sell that property in 2009 or 2024, the value will change, but that’s a risk and gamble you both take. And they can sell small parts of that 10% whenever they want, if they want.
None of that is debt. Debt would be a loan from the bank that requires payments over time.
Your collateral is now useless, give me more collateral or pay me back
I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how loan contracts work. The lender is taking a risk and is agreeing to accept the offered collateral as insurance against the debt. They can’t just decide they don’t like the collateral any more and unilaterally change the terms.
That’d be like if you took out a mortgage to buy a $300K house for a $250K sale price, and then a flood comes through and damages the property to the point that it’s only worth $200K, and the bank came knocking and said “pay it back or at least fork over another $100K so we feel comfy again.”
I’ll admit, useless was a bit hyperbolic statement. But with stocks there is a concept called margin call which in layman terms means that if the value of your stocks (relative to the amount of what you loaned) drops too low the lender will ask you to either pay off a portion of the loan (to bring the existing loan in line with the new evaluation of the stock) or add additional collateral (to raise the total value of the collateral to be in line with the remaining loan). If neither of those things are done the lender will sell your stocks at whatever price they can get to pay off the loan (either fully or partially).
Mortgages don’t have margin calls. If the houses loses value it just loses value and the bank doesn’t care as long as you keep paying the payments.
Right, loans and stock market shenanigans are different animals. I assumed you were talking about the former given the context of “how did OpenAI find the money to pay AMD $78bn”.
In retrospect, I suppose options could have played a factor… but then again this level of ratfuckery is well beyond my understanding, so you could tell me Santa gave them the money and it’d make just as much sense.
Money did exchange hands but it had to come from somewhere, OpenAI doesn’t have 78bln just lying around. Someone somewhere took debt so OpenAI could pay that price and OpenAI is planning on paying back that debt with AMD stock. That why I said the simple answer is that the people buying AMD stock are the ones paying for those chips. But these things don’t happen in an instance, they take time which is why I said the complex answer is that nobody really knows who is going to pay it back. As a simplistic example, while the “dump” of AMD stocks hasn’t happened someone can borrow money against the overpriced AMD stock. Now, if whoever gave the actual money to OpenAI comes asking for their 78bln back and OpenAI doesn’t have it they will dump the AMD stocks to pay it back and then the person who used AMD stocks as collateral will be asked “Your collateral is now useless, give me more collateral or pay me back” and that money will be found elsewhere until someone goes broke and the debt gets defaulted. Of course that won’t happen as long as nobody comes asking for the spent money.
In my eyes this deal is a speculative investment leveraging debt. OpenAI itself doesn’t have the debt but it is somewhere because the actual liquidated money had to come from somewhere. And there is speculative investment with the hopes of AMD stocks going up enough to offset that debt. The 78bln might not end up as debt for OpenAI, but it might end up as a different debt for the loans that used propped up AMD stock as collateral. IMO it doesn’t really matter where exactly the debt ends up because if the bubble pops AMD stocks are also going to take a hit and someone somewhere is going to end up paying for the debt that was caused by this 78bln deal.
AFAIU, the GPUs are free for OpenAI. They will sell their free stock to pay AMD for GPUs. OpenAI is already on the hook for over $1T in other commitments, and debt will be very expensive for them.
But so you have to pick one. Unless you’re suggesting that all the day traders and retirement funds and investment funds are buying or already holding AMD bought it all with credit cards. Which is not the case, which is why this isn’t debt.
Ask yourself - If it’s debt, then who is the creditor? Who holds the loan paperwork? What rate did they get? What’s the collateral? None of those things are true here.
Stock value isn’t real any more than the value of gold or silver or bitcoin, but it’s all relative to the value of the stock when sold. But it being sold is the point. The stocks are worth money. Real actual money. If the market hits a correction - as other more bubble-like parts of the AI industry and the current general economic shitpile are likely to afford us all in the next few years - then OpenAI and NVIDIA and AMD won’t be carved up and sold for parts after a bankruptcy by a bank because they’re still able to sell the stocks to fund payroll. As long as no one sells off a ton of stock quickly and the stock value doesn’t collapse, then it’s simply a risky circular a bet on themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an innovation in stupidity and shortsightedness. But call it what it is, which is not debt.
Where would OpenAI get 78bln to pay AMD? It’s very unlikely that money would come from their existing revenue streams, so it most likely would come from either external investors or a loan. Loan obviously comes with debt so let’s say it came from an external investors? But where did they get that kind of money? Investors rarely have billions just sitting in the bank so they had to liquidize somehow. Maybe they sold some of their non-liquid assets, but most likely they took loans against their assets (because loaning is cheaper than selling) which means we’re back to there being debt somewhere.
That is the simple answer because people would buy the stock, stock price would go up, OpenAI 10% would end up being worth 78bln, OpenAI dumps the stock and that money goes back to whoever financed the 78bln. Debt would get paid off and no additional debt would exist (except for people who bought the stock without having the money to buy the stock). But that’s a simplistic way of viewing this whole ordeal.
I don’t see an issue here. In my eyes there is debt created to accumulate 78bln and the speculative part is using AMD stock to cover the debt. If the pump and dump fails would there not be debt?
The issue here is this isn’t debt!
Debt would be SoftBank giving OpenAI $78 B in cash and then in a year or two asking for payments of cash back.
This investment/stock circular thing is like if you were building a house and lived next to a brick yard, and convinced the brick yard owner to give you bricks to build your house. Your house would be the demonstration of how lovely the bricks are, and in return you’ll give them 10% of the title of your property. If you sell that property in 2009 or 2024, the value will change, but that’s a risk and gamble you both take. And they can sell small parts of that 10% whenever they want, if they want.
None of that is debt. Debt would be a loan from the bank that requires payments over time.
But where did OpenAI get the money to buy those chips (+10% of the company)?
I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how loan contracts work. The lender is taking a risk and is agreeing to accept the offered collateral as insurance against the debt. They can’t just decide they don’t like the collateral any more and unilaterally change the terms.
That’d be like if you took out a mortgage to buy a $300K house for a $250K sale price, and then a flood comes through and damages the property to the point that it’s only worth $200K, and the bank came knocking and said “pay it back or at least fork over another $100K so we feel comfy again.”
I’ll admit, useless was a bit hyperbolic statement. But with stocks there is a concept called margin call which in layman terms means that if the value of your stocks (relative to the amount of what you loaned) drops too low the lender will ask you to either pay off a portion of the loan (to bring the existing loan in line with the new evaluation of the stock) or add additional collateral (to raise the total value of the collateral to be in line with the remaining loan). If neither of those things are done the lender will sell your stocks at whatever price they can get to pay off the loan (either fully or partially).
Mortgages don’t have margin calls. If the houses loses value it just loses value and the bank doesn’t care as long as you keep paying the payments.
Right, loans and stock market shenanigans are different animals. I assumed you were talking about the former given the context of “how did OpenAI find the money to pay AMD $78bn”.
In retrospect, I suppose options could have played a factor… but then again this level of ratfuckery is well beyond my understanding, so you could tell me Santa gave them the money and it’d make just as much sense.