Making Sense of OpenAI’s $300,000,000,000 Valuation
OpenAI raised $40 billion at a valuation of $300 billion.
That makes OpenAI more valuable than:
• Salesforce: $260B valuation, $35B revenue — the largest standalone SaaS company.
• Uber: $150B valuation, $44B revenue — the biggest software success from the mobile computing era.
OpenAI is now almost as valuable as Coca-Cola, which serves ~2 billion servings to the world every day.
Classic corporate finance theory says the value of a company equals the sum of its discounted future cash flows.
If we believe in that, we have to believe OpenAI will generate over $300 billion in discounted cash flow—forever.
But when it comes to OpenAI’s valuation, it’s not about the math.
Nobody really knows how to calculate the future discounted cash flow of OpenAI.
It’s about the story.
OpenAI is accidental consumer tech—the rarest breed in tech.
The last time we saw something like this was Facebook (Meta).
Meta now serves 3.3 billion users every day and is valued at $1.5 trillion.
Let’s recap the characteristics of consumer tech:
• Zero marginal cost
• Potential to serve the entire world
• Winner takes all
We’ve had two so far: Google and Meta.
Both are worth over a trillion dollars.
Both emerged from major tech paradigm shifts—the internet and mobile computing.
Both run on an ads-based model.
Now, we’re in another paradigm shift—AI.
And we’re watching one consumer tech company emerge to take it all.
A big chunk of OpenAI’s $300B valuation is the ChatGPT brand.
It serves 120 million daily active users (400 million weekly).
Even though using Claude sometimes feels better, its brand is unknown to most people on Earth. And second, ChatGPT is simply a better product—especially the user experience on macOS. It’s just so good.
As Stratechery argued, ChatGPT should serve ads and open its best model to free-tier users, expanding its total addressable market to all 8 billion people.
DeepSeek had its moment precisely because free-tier users couldn’t access OpenAI’s reasoning model. But Sam Altman could still change his mind and offer OpenAI’s best model to everyone.
In the end, it’s no surprise Masayoshi Son (SoftBank) is investing in OpenAI—not Warren Buffett.
Son believes in stories. Buffett believes in cash flows.
Right now, it’s the story that matters—not the math.