Q really high expectations on Thinking Machines around what they put out first. I don't think these, these people leaving, maybe it makes it harder to deliver. Right? On those expectations, but the expectations are still sky high. I did feel like kind of rough messaging, uh, very, very rough messaging, right? You know, pushing this, like, unethical conduct angle. People at OpenAI have, obviously, their bias, but they've denied it.
A Some quick thoughts on Barrett Zoff and Madsen Schoenholz. Going back to OpenAI, Barrett was the vice president post-training at OpenAI before he left for Thinking Machines. He left OpenAI in September of 2024, Barrett would have probably, would have probably initially had options for about 10 to 30% of Thinking Machines. That's insane. They had six co-founders. How could that beat so high? Uh, post training was one of the more valuable skills at launch, I suppose. Okay. Uh, the seed round was two billion at twelve billion, so this would mean that he would have options now for around eight to 25% of the current company. This seems all, uh, hypothetical here. Uh, there were rumors back in November that Thinking Machines was in talks to raise at 50 to sixty billion, so this puts his equity at four Billion to fifteen billion valuation. Thinking machines could probably exit somewhere at between 30 and 60 today. Who has that money? I don't know. Maybe NVIDIA buys them or something. At least at some point over the next two years. I think the most likely acquirers would probably be Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and NVIDIA. Okay, large cap company that wants to build a frontier model. Barrett would have been just over his one year cliff, so assuming he was not fired for a cause or thinking He doesn't want to litigate. He still has about one to three and a half million.
AI assessment note: “Some quick thoughts on Barrett Zoff and Madsen Schoenholz.”