Accelerating the Next Phase of AI

OpenAI just said it closed a jaw-dropping $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation, calling itself the “core infrastructure for AI” and boasting rocket-ship stats: from $1B a year to now $2B a month in revenue, and sprinting toward a billion weekly users. Partners like Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank (with a16z and others), and a continued Microsoft cameo piled in, while ARK Invest will funnel shares into ETFs and banks reportedly helped pull $3B from individual investors. That’s the news. The comments? Pure chaos.

The community seized on OpenAI’s “flywheel” pitch—more computers → smarter models → better products → more cash—to ask if this is momentum or marketing. One user deadpanned that FTX, the collapsed crypto exchange, had a “flywheel” too, while another called the whole thing a game of “musical chairs.” The phrase “no AGI mention” lit up conspiracy meters, with skeptics claiming the long-promised “artificial general intelligence” is quietly being memory-holed. Meanwhile, jaded readers rolled their eyes at the corporate prose: “I am so sick of AI writing.”

Memes flew fast: “hamster wheel” instead of flywheel; “from unicorn to megacorn”; and a running gag that retail investors finally get “a bone” via ARK. Fans framed it as the electricity moment—build the grid, watch the boom. Critics say it’s bubble theater with GPUs as props. Either way, this raise is the new arena, and the comments are throwing tomatoes and confetti in equal measure.