Peering Back at the OpenAI "Constellations"
Just about six months ago, I looked at the OpenAI "Constellations" – that is, the companies that were formed by teams that had previously worked at the AI behemoth. In particular, there were a handful of companies in that orbit which had raised absolutely bonkers amounts of money, undoubtedly in part thanks to that affiliation. And since then, things have just gotten more nuts.
First and foremost, OpenAI itself has not only continued on their path of raising $40B – more money than has ever been raised in any IPO – at a $300B valuation, they're now letting employees do secondary sales in the $500B range, setting a new record valuation for a still-private company. That valuation is undoubtedly driven not just by their own growth, but by those "Constellations" around them which are setting new high watermarks – again, just six months later.
Breaking them down once again by the categories I previously used:
Ursa Major
- Anthropic had recently been valued at $61.5B at the time of the last post. A new round will push that number to $170B – and perhaps $175B, given that the amount being raised seemingly just jumped from $5B to $10B.
- xAI was trying to raise at a valuation around $75B six months ago. Since then, they merged with one of Elon Musk's other Xs – Xitter. That deal pushed the combined valuation past $100B (a price that subsequent stock sales validated – including maybe by SpaceX) and now they're apparently trying to raise at a valuation between $170B and $200B. It doesn't seem like they've been able to do that yet, but presumably they'll be able to at some point at some premium.
- Safe Superintelligence is seemingly "stuck" on their $32B valuation that was reported back then. It probably hasn't helped to lose their CEO and co-founder, Daniel Gross, to Meta...
- Perplexity had been valued at $9B putting them in "Ursa Minor". But since then, they've been all over the news thanks to Apple talking about them both internally and under oath, in court, no less, launching a web browser, and offering to buy Chrome with money they clearly don't have. After jumping to a $14B valuation, a few weeks later, they jumped again to $18B. Obviously, if they need to raise, say, $34.5B, that will go up again...
- Thinking Machine Lab was thought to be valued at $9B out of the gates and now that number is something more like $12B, as Meta also keeps trying to pull people out of that startup – with offers apparently north of $1B.
Ursa Minor
- Harvey, the AI legal startup was valued at $3B at the time – that's now at $5B after a new round.
- Periodic Labs is a new startup that secured a $1B valuation thanks to a $200M round led by a16z – after OpenAI, where co-founder Liam Fedus had worked, tried to lead.
- Eureka Labs, the startup from Andrej Karpathy, still doesn't seem to have a valuation set. At least not one that's been reported...
All told, whereas the "Constellations" were previously valued in aggregate just under $200B, now that number is more like $413B – assuming xAI gets at least the $170B valuation they're seeking. But even without that, Anthropic alone is almost past the total combined valuation previously.
And when you add in the new $500B valuation for OpenAI – we're closing in on a $1T combined valuation for OpenAI and their diaspora...