You read that right - $38 billion.

That’s what OpenAI’s alumni have collectively managed to raise in the past six months - not on products, but on past performance.

When three of its most high-profile leaders - Mira Murati, Ilya Sutskever, and Sam Altman - each stepped into new ventures or deals, investors lined up before any product even existed. Together, they’ve raised sums that would make most Fortune 500 CEOs jealous.

Apparently, credibility has replaced traction. Why wait for the demo when you can just fund the people who’ve already broken the internet once?

Fine, you didn’t build ChatGPT, but there are still lessons for those of us without a PhD in Computer Science.

Today, I’m decoding:

Fundraising has always favoured status. The difference now is that in the AI sector, status alone seems to close the round - product optional.

Take Mira Murati. As CTO, she oversaw the launches that made OpenAI a household name: ChatGPT, DALL-E, GPT-4. After leaving earlier this year, she raised $2 billion for her next venture, Thinking Machines Lab, which, minor detail, doesn’t actually have a product yet.

Investors didn’t seem bothered. Why would they? If you can poach engineers from Google and Meta, apparently that’s worth more than a working prototype.

Then there’s Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist. His fingerprints are on every major leap in the field, from computer vision breakthroughs to the GPT family of models. When he launched Safe Superintelligence (SSI) this summer, he asked for $1 billion. Investors cheerfully multiplied that by thirty before the ink was dry. They weren’t backing a business plan, but the certainty that elite researchers would follow him, given his name is stamped on the field’s biggest discoveries.

And as for Sam Altman - still OpenAI’s CEO despite his board-imposed weekend getaway - he reminded everyone just how quickly he can make capital move. He pushed through a $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s secretive startup without the market even knowing what the company does. Investors didn’t ask questions. If Altman said billions, billions it was.

At this point, leaving OpenAI looks less like a career change and more like a fundraising strategy.

But the bigger point is that yesterday's wins count more than today’s numbers. In most industries, you need customers, revenue or at least a smidge of evidence you exist. But when you’ve famously built the thing churning out everyone’s shopping lists, school essays and break-up texts, you don’t really need a prototype. That’s why Murati, Sutskever and Altman can raise billions before shipping anything new. Investors assume that if these three are in the room, the future of AI is too.

Those billions weren’t betting on products at all; they were betting on the people. Capitalism has simply swapped obsessions again:

Right now, human capital is the hack. No demos or prototypes needed - just a work history polished enough to make doubt look unsophisticated.

And sometimes not even that. The market has shown it will still bankroll big promises with paper-thin credentials if the story hits the right nerve. Crypto’s boom years saw whitepapers raise hundreds of millions with no product in sight. More recently, climate-tech funds have poured capital into moonshots before a single pilot project was built. In those cases, the pitch itself - not the history - was the collateral.

AI, though, is different. It has already inflated chip valuations, gutted parts of the creative industry and forced even “boring” sectors like law firms or logistics to retool. The impact is visible, which only makes investors hungrier to back the people who’ve already steered it.

That’s why “traction” has been through a rebrand. A decade ago it meant customers and revenue. Today, it means credibility, story and the confidence that the product will show up… eventually.

Reddit has been having a field day with these raises.

Threads are comparing valuations to SpaceX - a company that actually launches rockets (or tries to, at least) - and asking how a firm with no product can be worth almost as much. 

SSI gets the most heat: its launch revealed no business model, no customers, no plan. To sceptics, that makes the billion-dollar price tag look more like gambling than rational investing.

LinkedIn isn’t much gentler. 

One commenter on my recent post said the whole thing smells like the ZIRP era - money chasing narratives because there’s nothing tangible to chase. They add that secrecy has become “more irritating than alluring”.

Call it what you like - cagey, evasive, opaque - but in AI, secrecy is survival. Only amateurs overshare. The serious players know you don’t post your strategy online when the competition is one Medium post away from cloning it.

Of course, the less you reveal, the more investors squint at your valuation, and that’s where the tension kicks in.

Scepticism is bound to happen when valuations sprint ahead of reality. But investors rarely step aside. They’d rather swallow a dud investment than miss out on the next OpenAI. That fear of being left behind flips the power dynamic - and founders can use it.

If AI raises like these ones prove anything, it’s that money can move faster than products. But speed alone isn’t the edge. Timing is. 

At FundOnion, we recently pulled off one of our fastest raises to date - under 24 hours, start to finish. All because the borrower was in a strong position: business healthy, strategy clear and looking to use debt as fuel rather than as a last resort. The broker had everything packaged, the lender was confident and, when the pieces clicked, the raise looked effortless. 

This illusion of speed came down to impeccable timing, ultimately.

Entrepreneurs often obsess over shaving days off a raise, as if capital markets work like Deliveroo. They don’t. Capital is closer to property: list at the wrong time, and the whole market shifts under you.

Lesson: don’t confuse motion with progress. A fast raise is a good headline. A well-timed raise is a good valuation. Wait until your story and the market align before you pull the trigger.

The billion-dollar science fair might be entertaining, but here’s what matters if your LinkedIn doesn’t say ex-OpenAI:

A) Build reputation early. Partnerships with credible names, heavyweight advisors or even a steady stream of thoughtful LinkedIn posts can buy you investor trust before you’ve shipped anything. You might not have “I built ChatGPT” on your CV, but don’t underestimate what a well-placed introduction or a few loud advocates can do for you.

B) Time your raise. Founders often obsess over shaving weeks off a process, but investors care about context, not punctuality. Go too early and you’ll spend the round justifying why you exist. Go when the market narrative is in your favour, and the same story suddenly looks like a train investors can’t afford to miss. 

C) Lean into narrative. The best pitch deck in the world is useless if no one remembers it five minutes later. A 2025 Cornell University study tracked 197 UK startups in micro and nanotech and compared their press coverage with their funding outcomes. The pattern was obvious: startups that stuck in the media got stuck right into investors’ wallets. They called it media memorability, and it turned out to be a better predictor of funding than the usual hard metrics.

C) Be prepared. Everyone loves to call a fast raise “lucky”. It isn’t. Our fastest deal at FundOnion looked like magic from the outside - borrower prepped, broker lined up, lender ready. The unsexy strategy: KYC forms, ID scans and accountants combing through receipts. Meticulous preparation.

D) Don’t fear stealth. Early-stage products are fragile. Rather than funding the prototype, investors are banking on the chance you’ll get there first. Staying quiet means you don’t do your competitors’ homework for them. 

Remember, you don’t need to be Murati or Sutskever to raise. But you do need to look like you’ve got inevitability on your side (even if you’re still proving it).

Pull up your pitch deck and add every credibility signal you’ve got - past exits, technical depth, domain expertise, heavyweight advisors, the lot.

If this week’s case study proves anything, capital flows to inevitability.

Founders by David Senra. A podcast about the people who changed the course of history: Ray Kroc building McDonald’s, Napoleon taking over Europe, the Rothschilds dominating finance.

What I like is that it doesn’t try to make ambition look heroic. It’s not all vision boards and leadership mantras - it’s nicking ideas, being stubborn, blagging it and occasionally striking gold.

It’s a reminder that impact usually comes from people willing to be unreasonably persistent, not impeccably polished.

It’s useful to people like us because it strips away the myth. You don’t need a bulletproof pitch. You need momentum, nerve and the ability to frame it like success is just a matter of time.

The AI frenzy isn’t rational, it’s sport. Investors aren’t waiting for proof - they’re placing bets, because missing out looks worse than being wrong. 

Nobody knows if AI will cure cancer or just write better shopping lists, but the secrecy, the hype, the speed… It’s addictive.

So yes, the rules are absurd. But if you want to play, timing is still the one card you control.

If you’re wondering when to play it, that’s what I’m here for.

Till next time,

James