The more interesting is HF turned down a $500M Nvidia investment late last year at
a $7B valuation, after passing on a $235M round in 2023 at $4.5B —
going from "we don't want a dominant investor" to a $13B full
acquisition in under a year is quite the reversal.
Oh yeah, so surprising to refuse $500M that go in the pockets of your company that is now owned in large part by the investor, but then accept $13B that go directly in your own pockets.
Reversal would be "valued at 7B then valued at nothing", this is more like "nah, we want more" then "nah, we want more" then "yes, that's what we want :)".
I don't think they passed on the 4.5 billion. They still raised it in 2023 with investors like Alphabet etc. They turned Nvidia *earlier this year* for the $7 billion valuation deal. It makes sense if they were angling for an acquisition.
its always the most virtue signaling people (sam on "openess", dario on pretty much every word coming out of his mouth, HF) that ends up doing the worst things because they always tend to extreme. Funny to see them joining the biggest corporation on earth by market cap after the every day virtue signaling of pretty much every employee working for them.
very few people can lock a vision and fight billions dollars with integrity. In tech they mostly end up shadowed. People like JB Kempf with VLC or Bellard. Maybe even Torvald or Jeremy Howard belong to this list of people who could have been way richer than they are now if they wanted to go against their visions and beliefs.
