Inside OpenAI’s $500B Valuation | Altimeter’s Largest Bet

Apoorv Agrawal, AI & Software Partner, Altimeter

Aug 27, 2025

Inside the Largest Investment in the History of Altimeter → OpenAI

With $10B+ AUM, Altimeter made its largest investment ever into OpenAI. Leading the investment for the firm, AI & Software Partner Apoorv Agrawal entered at the $150B valuation.. now, with OpenAI reaching a $500B valuation, 700M weekly active users (WAUs), & $10B ARR (as of June), Apoorv breaks down how to value OpenAI's insane growth. We dig into the numbers.

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Covering a ton of ground, this might be one of our most info/analysis-rich conversations to date, which Apoorv explained quite well — charts below.

From historical tech supercycles & VC power law dynamics (where only 0.3% of companies drive returns), to the economics of AI, billion-dollar talent wars, AI agents becoming the world’s top hackers (XBOW), and how Palantir’s Forward Deployed Engineers built a billion-dollar talent culture (this interview was legendary).

But wait, there’s more! Apoorv also shared his lessons from working with CTO Shyam Sankar & CEO Alex Karp, and how that helps him evaluate founders.

Plus, we uncover IPO predictions for Klarna, Discord, Databricks, Cerebras, & Anduril.

5 Key Takeaways + Charts Below

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Timestamps

(00:00) Welcome & Altimeter’s $10B+ AUM strategy
(01:57) Why Altimeter concentrated its largest investment ever in OpenAI
(04:45) VC Power Law: why 0.3% of companies drive 99% of returns
(09:25) Consumer adoption of ChatGPT & enterprise spillover
(12:08) Velocity: Why speed is the ultimate moat in AI
(14:18) Parasocial relationships with ChatGPT
(19:29) Adoption curves: raising the ceiling vs. raising the floor
(23:30) Defining AGI & DOOM
(25:40) GPT-5 release: volatility, iteration, & anti-fragility
(32:00) XBOW AI: When AI becomes the world’s top hacker
(38:22) Where AI value accrues — chips, infrastructure, or applications
(42:50) The billion-dollar talent wars & Meta’s AI strategy
(44:12) Palantir’s billion-dollar FDE culture
(50:10) Lessons from Shyam Sankar & Alex Karp
(53:52) Evaluating founder performance & IPO readiness in today’s market
(55:36) IPO Predictions: Klarna, Discord, Databricks, Cerebras, Anduril

Cue the Highlight Reel

5 Key Takeaways

Altimeter’s Largest Investment Ever → OpenAI
Power-Law: 0.3% of companies return the majority of venture profits, and OpenAI is firmly in that cohort. Growth, momentum, leadership, rapid release strategies (how they recover fast), & the actual results.
AI Supercycle Mirrors Past Technology Shifts
Just as Google (internet), Apple (mobile), and Meta (social) became trillion-dollar winners, Apoorv believes the AI supercycle will mint a platform of comparable or larger scale.
“Speed Is the Only Moat”
OpenAI’s relentless feature velocity (text, voice, image, GPT-5, agents, research tools) is its defensibility. Apoorv describes speed of iteration, not model superiority alone, as the critical moat in AI.
The #1 Hacker in the World is now AI: XBOW
Altimeter backed XBOW, an AI-native cybersecurity company where AI agents have already surpassed humans in penetration testing. XBOW quickly rose to the #1 global hacker rank on HackerOne, signaling that AI has become a dominant force in security offense and defense.
Palantir Culture → Forward Deployed Billionaires
Apoorv’s FDE Palantir background shapes his investment lens. He credits Palantir’s mission-driven culture, customer obsession, and forward deployed engineering model for producing an outsized number of billion-dollar founders, lessons he now applies at Altimeter when evaluating founder performance.

How to Evaluate the Next Supercycle

OpenAI

XBOW

IPO Predictions

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