"To ensure that investors didn't make an exploitative amount of money from the arrangement, returns were capped at a hundred times the initial investment. Microsoft stood to make a paltry $100 billion. Also, the deal would end if and when OpenAI developed Artificial General Intelligence, on the basis that existing forms of money would no longer have any value."
"Existing forms of money would no longer have any value??!! I've, of course, heard about AGI. I didn't quite realize that it was the tent-pole in this PT Barnum circus that is driving the AI bubble. Say what? I'd heard techbros talk about this alleged outcome - the singularity event that machine-learning scientists are working ferverently towards - in their patented Jungle Book snake-hypnosis interviews.Aswath Damodaran, rather charitably in my opinion, calls it the " CEO as storyteller "."
Microsoft's $1 billion investment in OpenAI included a 100x cap on returns and a clause terminating the deal if Artificial General Intelligence emerged, implying conventional money would lose value. The AGI narrative functions as a central promise that inflates expectations and justifies oversized valuations. Charismatic storytelling and cultish industry rhetoric have enabled speculative capital flows into ventures with weak fundamentals. Venture financing structures, concentrated exposures, and misaligned incentives magnify downside risk. A market correction would reveal leverage, governance failures, and contagion pathways that could produce a broader financial shock within the technology ecosystem.
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