> - Amazon's $50B is only $15B, with the rest being "after certain conditions are met", whatever that means (probably an IPO, which isn't happening)

Startup funding is often given in increments depending on milestones being met. Most startups just don’t announce that it’s conditional.

For large funding rounds, nobody gets a check for the full amount at once.

The funding would not be conditional on an IPO because that wouldn’t make any sense. The IPO is the liquidity event for the investors and there’s no reason for a startup to take private investment money that only enters the company after IPO.

This is pretty standard. Usually the conditions are performance benchmarks, but may also include IPO. Typically its done in multiple tranches, e.g. 15B at the start, 5 more if you gain +500m users, 5 more if your profit exceeds X, and the rest for IPO (im over simplifying)

The conditions are either an IPO or achieving AGI. I’d be curious to know how the contract defines AGI. If I recall correctly, the OAI-Microsoft deal just defined it as “AI-shaped tech that can generate $100 billion in annual profits”, which I think is actually close to the correct answer, insofar as we will have AGI when the markets decide we have AGI and not when some set of philosophical criteria seem to be satisfied.

Not to nitpick but to expand, many funding deals (pretty much all above 100M) are structured like that.

You'll never get a billion dollar check from anyone.

I've even seen startups raise like 500k pre-seed with tranches in it, lmao!