E220: OpenAI tender eyes $500b valuation; OpenAI offers govt ChatGPT for $1; OpenAI releases open-weight models; OpenAI launches GPT-5 model; Bullish targets $4.23b IPO valuation; n8n raises at $2.3b pre-money; Figure Technology files $3.3b IPO; Clay rais

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. AG Dillon is closing six pre-IPo stock funds in September of 2025. and real xai grok lambda labs together ai and a space economy company use these single stock funds to build bespoke pre-ipo stock portfolios you select the pre-ipo stock company exposures and weight allocations to each pre-ipo stock to express your unique investment thesis available for purchase at charles schwab fidelity and directly at ag dylan funds 2 500 minimum investment Financial advisors only. Email Aaron.Dillon at agdillon.com to invest. Again, that's A-A-R-O-N.D-I-L-L-O-N at agdillon.com to invest.

0:47All right. Now the pre-IPO stock update for August 8, 2025. A huge week for OpenAI, the AI large language model business. First up, we got a tender offer preparing to hold a share sale that could value the company at$500 billion, allowing early investors and employees to sell up to$1.5 billion in shares, marking a 66 % increase from its$300 billion valuation in the$40 billion funding round that closed in the first half of 2025, which was the largest private tech fundraiser to date. Thrive Capital is expected to lead tender. Annual recurring revenue is estimated to be$20 billion by December 2025.

1:31So that puts this valuation at a 25x forward revenue multiple. The company is also offering its ChatGPT Enterprise product to the U.S. federal agencies for$1 through the next year, providing access to frontier models for the federal executive branch workforce at essentially no cost, with an additional 60-day access for features like advanced voice mode and the initiative partnered with the U.S. General Services Administration aims to enhance government services. And in June, OpenAI launched OpenAI for Government, which secured a contract for up to$200 million from the U.S. Department of Defense while the company plans to open its first office in Washington, D.C.

2:14OpenAI also announced that they launched two open-weight AI reasoning models, GPT-OSS 120 bits and GPT-OSS 20. The release marks its first open-language model release since ChatGPT 2 over five years ago, with both freely available on Hugging Face Grok and other platforms. The larger model runs on a single NVIDIA GP2, and the lighter model can run on a consumer laptop with 16 gigabytes of memory. Both models outperform DeepSeq's R1, but they do underperform OpenAI's 03 and 04 mini models. ChatGPT launched GPT-5. It's a unified AI model combining reasoning from its O-series with fast responses from its GPT-series.

3:07launched and is available for free to all the free ChatGPT users as a default. That's over 700 million weekly users that enables tasks like generating software applications and creating research briefs. OpenAI plus subscribers at the$20 price point get higher usage limits and the pro users at the$200 per month price point get unlimited use. bullish a crypto exchange is seeking to raise 200 or excuse me 629 million by offering 20.3 million shares priced between 28 and 31 each in a u in its us ipo marking its second attempt in four years after abandoning a 2021 blank check merger uh that's a spac valued at 9 billion due to regulatory hurdles.

3:56The target valuation for the IPO is$4.23 billion. The company, which operates a crypto trading exchange for institutions and acquired CoinDesk, which is a crypto-related media outlet, in 2023, reported$349 million loss for the quarter ended March 31, compared to$105 million profit for the previous year due to a fall in the fair value of its crypto holdings the plans to convert a significant portion of the ipo proceeds into u.s dollar denominated stable coins amid a rally in crypto related companies following the genius act and circle internet trading at over 400 percent its ipo price since june bullish aims to list in the new york stock exchange under blsh that's the ticker with jp morgan jeffries and citigroup as lead underwriters.

4:468 and 8, N8N, excuse me, an AR automation and workflow company is raising a round led by Excel, which has outbid competitors, including Insight Partners, and is set to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, buying the company at 2.3 billion pre-money. That's a significant jump from its$350 million valuation just four months prior. That's a lot of an increase in such a short period of time. The round underscores NANs, rapid growth in the AI automation space, where it specializes in workflow tools, servings in over 50 ,000 users across enterprises like Siemens and Deutsche Telekom, with annual recurring revenue surpassing 40 million as of Q2 2025.

5:30This capital infusion will fuel expansion into new markets, including enhanced integrations with platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Azure, positioning NAN to capture a larger share of the$150 billion global automation software market by 2030. Figure Technology Solutions, it's a non-bank consumer lender filed confidentially for a US IPO, seeing an evaluation of up to$3.3 billion up from the$3 billion in its last funding round in 2021. The plans to raise$500 million by offering 20 million shares at$22 to$25 each. The company, which offers home equity line of credit and other loans using blockchain for faster processing, reported$355 million in Q1 2025 ARR.

6:17That's up 35 % versus the prior year and$121 million in EBITDA plus employee stock-based conversation or before employee stock-based conversation. Figure aims to list on the New York Stock Exchange under FIGR. as the ticker with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as lead underwriters. Clay, an AI sales agent and automation company, raised$100 million in a Series C round at a$3.1 billion valuation led by Capital G, bringing total funding to$204 million following a$1.25 billion Series B six months ago and a$1.5 billion Sequoia-led tender offer just two months ago. Existing investors, Meritech Capital, Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Box Group, and Bold Start, plus new backers Sapphire Ventures participated.

7:10Clay's customers include OpenAI, Anthropik, Canva, Intercom, and Rippling. The company expects to end the year with$100 million in revenue tripling from 2024. Grok, an AI semiconductor company, announced that OpenAI's new models, GPT-OS-S20 and GPT-OS-120, are now live on Grok's inference platform, enabling developers to run these models with production -grade speed, scale, and reliability, offering a full 128K context window. The launch, supported by Global Access via Grok Cloud, which is their cloud solution, includes built-in tools like code execution and browser search, marking the first time developers and enterprises can deploy openly licensed models backed by OpenAI instantly and at massive scale.

7:59Jonathan Ross, which is Grok's CEO, highlighted that the efforts of the Grok team in providing worldwide access on launch day, I think Sam Altman and OpenAI for championing open access, emphasizing that open source models lower barriers for those with limited resources and are backed by leading providers to ensure a democratic AI future. Grok currently is raising around at a$6 billion valuation. Eleven Labs, an AI multi-language audio generation company, announced a new AI music generator model cleared for commercial use, expanding beyond text-to-speech AI products, conversational bots, and speech translation tools, with samples including a synthetic voice rapping about a personal ambition influenced by Dr.

8:46Dre, NWA, and Kendrick Lamar. The company secured deals with Merlin Network and Cobalt Music Group for AI training materials representing artists like Adele, Nirvana, Mitski, Carly Rae Jepsen, Phoebe Bridgers, Beck Bon Iver, and Childish Gambino, with Cobalt ensuring voluntary opt-in revenue sharing, new streams, and misuse safeguards. This comes amid lawsuits against Suno and Udeo by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyrighted training. 11 Labs is a$4.6 billion secondary market valuation. It's up 32.7 % versus this November 2024 round. Brex, a business banking fintech company, has secured a payment institutions license in the European Union, enabling a full-scale European rollout by providing direct access to local payment rails and the ability to issue corporate credit cards in the block.

9:43with over 20 ,000 corporate clients and$200 million in annual revenue as of 2024, Brex aims to tap into the EU's$1.5 trillion business payments market, where it plans to launch services in key countries like Germany and France by Q1 2026, building on its US success with features like AI-powered expense management that processes $50 billion in transactions annually. This expansion comes amid Brex's$12.3 billion valuation from its last funding round in 2022, potentially setting the stage for renewed growth in international fintech adoption. All right, that's it for me this week. Thanks, and see you guys next week.