Tiger Global's $5 billion OpenAI gain rests on a $500 billion mark, a third of the price in talks

Crypto Briefing gets to its $5 billion by giving Tiger's early-investor pool about 1% of OpenAI and valuing the company at $500 billion ^[2]. The same 1% at the $852 billion post-money set on March 31 is about $8.5 billion ^[6][16]. At the $1.4 trillion valuation that Bloomberg reported OpenAI is discussing for a $30 billion raise, it is about $14 billion ^[3][13].

Each figure has to be set against $18 billion, the amount Tiger lost in 2022 when rates reversed, according to Institutional Investor as cited by The Daily Upside ^[4]. At the $500 billion mark the OpenAI gain offsets about 28% of that ^[14]. At $1.4 trillion it offsets about 78% ^[17], and none of it has been sold.

The entry is less settled than the exit. The Daily Upside has Tiger putting $150 million into OpenAI in 2021, before ChatGPT launched ^[20]. Crypto Briefing's 2019 and 2021 checks add to about $175 million by the end of that year ^[21][22][23]. Tiger also joined the 2024 round at a $157 billion post-money ^[5]. Neither outlet says how much went into that round. On the disclosed checks the cost is about 3.5% of the $5 billion ^[24]. So whether the figure is called a profit, as The Daily Upside does ^[1], or a stake value, as Crypto Briefing does ^[2], changes little unless the 2024 check was large.

The prices also disagree with each other. Crypto Briefing reports market speculation of an IPO valuation near $1 trillion ^[9], so a private round at $1.4 trillion would price OpenAI about 40% above the speculated listing price ^[19]. The Financial Times report of a revenue gap of roughly $20 billion came out the same Thursday as the Bloomberg report ^[10][3].

Tiger's current fundraising is modest by comparison. PIP 16, which holds most of the OpenAI position, and its follow-on PIP 17 come to around $2.2 billion combined, according to Crypto Briefing ^[7][8]. That is about an eighth of the 2022 loss ^[18]. Venture money as a whole is concentrated the same way: AI took 82.7% of US venture deal value in the third quarter, according to the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor ^[11]. For founders outside the category leaders, "the process can feel prolonged and uncertain as capital is concentrated within fewer deals than at any point this decade," Ginger Chambless, head of market insights for JPMorgan Commercial Banking, said in a recent report ^[12].

I think the OpenAI stake does more to repair one fund, PIP 16, than to repair the firm's 2022 record. At the price Crypto Briefing uses, it covers under a third of the loss ^[14]. The case against that view is the $1.4 trillion price. If the $30 billion round closes there and Tiger still holds 1%, the paper value nears $14 billion and covers about 78% of the 2022 loss ^[13][17].