00:00 Speaker A

Open AI’s valuation has reached a record $500 billion after the Microsoft backed AI leader wrapped up a secondary stock sale. Company is now the world’s most valuable startup passing Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which was last valued at around $400 billion. Wow. Um my question today is this, is there another way to play the rising valuations private companies are getting. Kenny, not so easy to invest in private companies. one sees the valuations on an open AI. Is it as simple as going out and buying even more Nvidia because of that tie up between the two companies?

00:41 Kenny

Well, that’s certainly one way to play it, but if you want to play it, you can access uh private companies through private company exchanges, right? Like the Nasdaq has an offshoot, I forget what it’s called. I think it’s called Nasdaq Private Markets actually. Um that you know, you can go in there. they got a list of private companies that are available that you can buy. Now, the bid and asks are very wide and you have to understand that, you know, it’s not a liquid market like is the public markets, but you can do it if you want to go into those private markets as long as you meet the requirements, you can do it. So there’s a couple of them. You can you can I don’t know the other ones offhand, but um you could do it that way. The other way is to go to the public markets and play the publicly traded stocks that are going to have some access to uh to to these private company names that, you know, are not available widely to the general public.

01:42 Speaker A

And of course, you can track and digest all things private market data right on Yahoo Finance. A great new feature on our site. And let me get back to you because it’s not just SpaceX and uh getting these high evaluations, open AI. I mean, you go down that list, you have companies like Stripe and Thropic. I mean, these companies continuing to raise money at ever higher valuations from various investors.

02:08 Ines

100% and they’re doing very well at it. I mean, one of the ones that I have watched is Tether because Tether uh in Q two reported uh $5 billion in net profit or 4.9 billion, um and they they put they put on their website, uh their profit. Uh and uh it’s it’s the number one uh stablecoin issuer in the world. I mean, we don’t hear that much about it here in the US because it’s used a lot very much abroad, but just last month, they announced uh a, that they’re launching a US uh uh regulated stable coin and that Bohin is uh going to be heading that division. So this is a company that you want to watch. I mean, they just had a evaluation of around $500 billion dollars. Uh so it’s it’s a company that also is not going to go public anytime soon. I mean, their CEO has been asked about this numerous times and he says, we’re very profitable. We don’t need to access the public markets right now. We don’t need an exit and he does not plan to go public anytime soon. But I bet you that there’s a lot of investors that would want in on this uh type of company.

03:22 Speaker A

Okay, no, it’s a good point In as thanks for pointing out Tether. That’s some good stuff. Kenny. uh well, my everyday I seemingly ask this, so I’ll ask it again. Uh these private rounds that are being raised at these valuations, are they bubble- like territory for you? And what’s the signal to the broader market if any?

03:41 Kenny

you know, it’s tough to say. I mean, look at what Open A I just did, right? They just, they just did a round at $500 billion dollars. It those numbers seem crazy to me. I mean, they just they just continue to seem crazy. So at some point, does it feel a little bubbly? It does to me. Uh but I’m not specifically myself personally in those in the private markets. I’m just not. We have access to it, but I personally am not, but it it feels bubbly to me. But look, AI is going to change the world. Quantum is going to change the world. We’ve seen how it happened. So it wouldn’t surprise me to see these names continue to increase in value.

04:22 Speaker A

And important to know Open I, not making any money, not making any money tomorrow, the day after, this year, maybe even next year or the years after that.

04:31 Kenny

Right, but it’s got a $500 billion valuation. Everybody’s dying to get in.

04:36 Speaker A

Totally normal.