Ed Elson

And as a result, we saw huge declines not in OpenAI stock, which isn't public, but in other stocks, some of which are the most important companies in the world.

NVIDIA, for example, fell 4% on the news.

Oracle fell 6%.

CoreWeave fell 7%.

And SoftBank fell 12%.

In fact, when you add up the market value that was erased, it comes out to nearly $400 billion, all because of one report about one company that isn't even publicly traded.

Now, that is somewhat concerning, but it raises a more concerning question, and that is, what will happen to the markets when OpenAI is publicly traded?

How will investors react when they are, say, required to report their revenue every quarter, or when they do have to tell us how much they actually plan to spend on compute over the next five years?

Will investors be more excited than they are right now, or less excited?

That is the trillion-dollar question, which will determine not only the value of this company, but also the value of many other companies, from Nvidia to Oracle to Microsoft.

Now, I don't know the answer to that question, but so far, each time we've gotten just a peek under the hood of OpenAI, such as this week, the reaction has been pretty negative.

And yet, despite the CFO's concerns, the plan is still for OpenAI to go public this year.

And when they do, investors won't just get to have a peek under the hood, they will conduct a full-scale examination of the company.

They will inspect the business and all of its flaws from every single angle.

So that will be a critical test for OpenAI.

But more importantly, it will also be a critical test for the rest of the stock market.

If OpenAI passes that test, then we are in the clear.

Markets will inevitably rip higher.

But if they fail that test, well, this week's events should make it quite clear.

The stock market as we know it today could start to come apart.