So... how long does it take before a company stops being called a startup?
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
256 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
76609 readers
3313 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Probably once they can stand on their own merits and make a profit. So never in the case of AI companies.
Lmao, right. 1.5 Billy just laying around? Probably not much of a startup anymore…
When they're weaned from the teat of round after round of investment
Once it starts actually generating profits id assume. Or in most cases once it gets bought out.
Yeah, the definition is (or at least used to be) that a startup doesn’t have a business model yet.
Where are they getting $1.5 billion from? Is this business actually profitable?
$500 million in run-rate revenue
Absolutely astounding that they can raise $13B on a sixth round of funding on that.
For the less finance jargon savvy, "run-rate revenue" just means projected annual revenue.
All this means they spent 3 years of revenue to make this go away.
Absolutely not a profitable business lol.
500 million was specific to Claude Code, they are at 5 billion annual run rate and growing
I see. That definitely makes 13B way more sane.
They’ve raised $32 billion total. Does it still sound sane?
5B run rate explains the wild 183B valuation better. The calculus is usually a solid return after 3 years and double or better by 5, so they're being on something like a 500B valuation by 2030.
And they very likely won't be profitable in the real sense even then.
The $5B run rate, as I understand it, is smoke and mirrors. Each dollar they make costs them much more than that dollar. Sell it at a loss, but make it up on volume!
Something something efficiency
The models are only getting more expensive to train and run as they increase in complexity.
Just remember that actual profit isn't important to investors. They're only here make money on the growth of the investment.
Goddamn parasites.
At the end of the day, somebody will be stuck holding the bag. They’ll probably have to IPO, so that retail investors can burn their life’s savings. That or they’ll get bailed out, in which all taxpayers get to absorb this insane pyramid scheme.
What we lose on sales we make up for in volume
Yikes.
Series F
Does this imply that it's the sixth round?
Goddamn.
Monopoly money using image generation ML tech for the design. Special partnership with HP for printing these notes.
They just did a fundraising round and raised like $13b
Haha what a funny way to say massive fraud and money laundering
Is any of that money actually going to the authors, or is this just like a fine they hand over and they donate some money to a charity or something?
Don’t be silly.
ah yes, a "startup" that has at least 1.5 billion
Glad to see they have to pay up but what was different about this compared to the similar case that Meta won the other day?
Meta has more money and is apparently immune from consequences?
No if you pay the president enough he will let you commit crimes against humanity.
I mean that's essentially the same thing I said just with more words.
Meta has money. Which makes them immune to consequences.
In this case, by way of bribes.
You didn't counter my statement. You just added to it.
It's not really a good thing though. $1.5bil will be a drop in the bucket for them. This is a settlement, which means it won't set any legal precedence.
Next time don't download the pirate library.
Next time don't get caught downloading the pirate library.
FTFY