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0 pointsmikepurvis3mo ago0 comments

Buying already existing shares of a public company is very different from buying just-created shares of a private one.

You literally are just handing them money for a piece of paper that says “lol you now own x% of whatever this thing turns out to be worth in the future.”

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close043mo ago

Shares are always "x% of whatever this thing turns out to be worth in the future". It can be something, it can be nothing.

Disney is giving them money in the hopes that the AI market (bubble?) keeps growing and the value of OpenAI grows with it. And importantly, Disney wants to shift to AI generated slo... content so partnering with a top player with a proven product is a safe choice. Disney licenses its IP to OpenAI, OpenAI can then provide tools that generate said content Disney-style.

> Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees

mikepurvisOP3mo ago

Right, but the distinction is that if I go buy a few thousand shares of DIS today, I'm not handing money to the Disney company, rather I'm handing it to the previous owners of those shares. The total pool of them is fixed, so it's all basically zero sum. At most my purchase might signal (in a microscopic way) to the market that there's demand, and push up the price, which benefits Disney.

It's very different when a privately held company creates new shares to sell, because then the money used to purchase those shares really does go right back to the company.

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