The departure of Sam Altman as the CEO of OpenAI has all the elements of a good drama – a charismatic main character, unexpected plot twists, and a seemingly final act that includes the reinstatement of Altman as a CEO.
Dec 1, 2023Liked by Francine McKenna, Olga Usvyatsky
Way too much skullduggery! It's funny in capital markets, how "the fluff" AI / Crypto / next-whizz-bang-thing integration announcements get bandied about with plastic hype like gaudy fashion and over megaphone, and yet actionable, substantive, future-direction-of-company impact statements are on the QT.
If the entirety of the "$10bn or $9bn" is Azure compute credits, is that a "Like Kind Exchange"? MSFT exchanges the fancy gpu laden computer platform, Open AI lends the precious weights reflecting months of training on the huge data of the internet. What is the implication of htat? Is there a tax implication? As in...:There would be no capital gain on any future OpenAI spinoffs involving the OpenAI weights in MSFT products/standalone companies for MSFT?
Tax implications - among other things - depend on how the deal was structured. We know very little about that. But recent events show that investors may need to think about governance and control before even considering impact of capital gains.
shocking amount of opacity and a sense of smug privilege on behalf of one of the biggest public cos in America. (If you were at all nervous about compliance, you'd disclose more.....not hide so much!)
Limitations of GAAP allow that opacity, unfortunately. See also our previous post with Francine McKenna where we discuss opacity of legal contingency reserves.
Way too much skullduggery! It's funny in capital markets, how "the fluff" AI / Crypto / next-whizz-bang-thing integration announcements get bandied about with plastic hype like gaudy fashion and over megaphone, and yet actionable, substantive, future-direction-of-company impact statements are on the QT.
If the entirety of the "$10bn or $9bn" is Azure compute credits, is that a "Like Kind Exchange"? MSFT exchanges the fancy gpu laden computer platform, Open AI lends the precious weights reflecting months of training on the huge data of the internet. What is the implication of htat? Is there a tax implication? As in...:There would be no capital gain on any future OpenAI spinoffs involving the OpenAI weights in MSFT products/standalone companies for MSFT?
Tax implications - among other things - depend on how the deal was structured. We know very little about that. But recent events show that investors may need to think about governance and control before even considering impact of capital gains.
shocking amount of opacity and a sense of smug privilege on behalf of one of the biggest public cos in America. (If you were at all nervous about compliance, you'd disclose more.....not hide so much!)
Limitations of GAAP allow that opacity, unfortunately. See also our previous post with Francine McKenna where we discuss opacity of legal contingency reserves.