SATURN - How OpenAI Is Turning Monopoly Money Into Real Debt
OpenAI is playing Monopoly with Monopoly money, and everyone's pretending the bills are real. The company just dropped $6.5 billion in stock—not cash, stock—to acquire io, Jony Ive's hardware startup that hasn't shown so much as a napkin sketch. They're about to blow another $3 billion on Windsurf, a coding assistant that's essentially Microsoft Copilot's twin brother. And then there's Stargate: a $500 billion fever dream where OpenAI promises to invest $19 billion of the same funny money for the privilege of paying Oracle $30 billion annually starting in 2028.
The math is marvelous in its madness. OpenAI sports a $300 billion valuation while burning $1.35 for every dollar of revenue. Their stock exists in private market purgatory—worth billions on paper, worthless at the bank (unless it's SoftBank, apparently). So why not spend it? Use it or lose it. Every acquisition paid in private equity creates another coalition member desperate for that IPO. Jony Ive, Windsurf's investors, the Stargate consortium—they're all passengers on a plane that only lands at the New York Stock Exchange.
OpenAI isn't buying companies; they're buying lobbyists. Rich, influential lobbyists who need that IPO more than they need oxygen. Because if OpenAI hits AGI—defined hilariously in leaked documents distributed to investors as $100 billion in profit—Microsoft's rights evaporate. Every stakeholder becomes a soldier in the war for public offering.
