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00:00 Speaker A
Yahoo Finance has officially announced the company of the year. And this year it’s been a company at the center of Wall Street’s bet on artificial intelligence, OpenAI. Here’s what OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer had to say about the award.
00:12 Sarah Friar
We’re energized to get a award like this. It, you know, really cements, I think what Chat GPT has become, which is the world’s default intelligence layer.
00:26 Julie
Joining us for more, Yahoo Finance Executive editor Brian Sazi, who helms this whole process for us, picking the company of the year.
00:35 Brian Sozzi
I love doing this award, Julie. This is cool stuff.
00:37 Julie
I know you do. You do. You’re you’re a big like winners and losers tallying guy.
00:39 Brian Sozzi
I do. I really do. I am. But look, and also in the running, Julie was was Nvidia. Now I’m not going to sit here and say that Nvidia didn’t have a great year. Not a transformational company, but at the end of the day, Open AI has been at the center I would think of the of the market narrative. When it announced a big deal with AMD uh a couple months ago, AMD’s stock shot up. Then you have Open AI also potentially becoming an investor in AMD. They’re putting orders in for Nvidia chips. So this company, at least to me, and our editorial team at the center of the AI trade.
00:48 Julie
Yeah.
01:10 Julie
Yeah.
01:21 Julie
Yeah, um, and this is the first time if I’m not mistaken that we have chosen a private company.
01:27 Brian Sozzi
Yes. That is uh correct. This is the first time. You know, I should mention, you know, I was just talking about Nvidia, they actually won in 2016 before they were really Nvidia. At the time they were just a gaming chips company. Uh but again, OpenAI, first private company we’ve awarded to with good reason. The valuations have gone up. I encourage everyone to go on to the Yahoo Finance Instagram account. Uh really some awesome charts out there right now showing how much the valuation has in fact risen for OpenAI. Uh a bunch of great feature pieces now on our homepage, uh looking at what’s next for OpenAI, which and could include hardware, Julie. Hardware. Yes. I don’t know if it’s going to be an iPhone killer. Uh Sarah, I asked her about when this uh hardware could potentially come. Of course, they acquired Johnny Ive’s or Johnny Ive’s company. Um of course, Johnny worked with uh Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs to create the iPhone. I don’t think this device is coming in the first quarter of next year, but they’re clearly working on it despite them being in a code red moment.
02:45 Julie
I don’t know, that that pebble thing that you wear around your neck, what is it called? The friend, that that AI hardware device?
02:54 Brian Sozzi
That’s a great name. That’s a great name.
02:55 Julie
I think that’s what it’s called. That one didn’t, I I feel like that landed with a clunk.
02:59 Brian Sozzi
Well there was there was a there was a lot of speculation that um, you know, Johnny likes pens. So I was trying to imagine while I was doing this piece like, if I have this on my desk, does that somehow talk to me? I I no idea. But there I think the company has not, there’s been a lot of focus of the past few weeks of them being in this code red moment, really drilling down on chat GPT and its functionality, who take the fight back to Gemini 3. You’ll see more updates very soon. Sarah was telling me on chat GPT. But I don’t think they have stopped working on hardware to reinvest in chat GPT.
03:32 Julie
Okay. I mean, yeah, and the latest uh they they have now come out with an updated chat GPT in response to that code red. You know, but but what you’re talking about at about it being at the center of the AI trade, that’s for good and for ill, right? Let’s not forget that there’s a lot of questions about its centrality as the fulcrum for this whole thing and that that means that there is vulnerability in the system because their plans are extraordinarily ambitious, their spending plans, and there’s been a lot of questions about that huge spending at the same time that they are burning and burning and burning cash. And the revenue ramp is you know, there are questions about whether it’s going to ramp fast enough to meet that spending.
04:31 Brian Sozzi
Oh god, yes.
04:54 Brian Sozzi
You’re right on. And what is it the term that we’ve been talking about for weeks, circular financing? And that’s why I think uh Sarah Fryer is the Sarah Fryer is the perfect CEO CFO to be running Open Eye at this juncture. Of course, she worked with Jack Dorsey at Square. She was the CFO. She was the CEO of Nextdoor where I think you and I originally met Sarah. She knows how to raise money. She knows the people to connect with to raise more money. I would suspect they’re going to raise more money next year. uh because they have to to fuel their ambitions. But to your point, at some point, they’re going to have to I think give a clearer line of sight on when profitability will be hit.
05:43 Julie
Right. And of course, an IPO is somewhere in the…
05:47 Brian Sozzi
We asked Sarah about IPO. Um, kind of a similar answer that I got from Sarah when I talked to her at the Goldman conference in September. She wasn’t going to come on today of course, uh, and announce they’re going public. That’s not how it goes. Could it happen next year? I’m not ruling it out.
05:57 Julie
Yeah. Interesting. Okay, we look forward to talking to you more about this. And as part of our company of the year coverage, special, you’re going to have a special guest on your show today.
06:10 Brian Sozzi
Special guests. We’re uh I I know.
06:12 Julie
I know.
06:13 Brian Sozzi
Well you didn’t think I’d know that? I just wrote the show script. Of course I’d know that, Julie. I’m so excited. You’re gonna be at the top of the show. You’re doing triple duty today.
06:19 Julie
Yes, looking forward to it.
06:20 Brian Sozzi
All hands on deck. Okay, thanks .