If you're sure you're going to make $1,000,000,000,000,000 as long as you hold onto 10000 pieces of paper, selling them for way, way less than that is very stupid. Even if it's generational wealth, it's still very stupid.

Most of the openai share owners are already millionares, either via the high salaries or whatever. To have people like altman, a billionaire, sell "trillionare" shares for mere millions of even hundreds of millions strongly implies a need to cash put at the top of the bubble, put those hundreds of millions in your hyped up pocket, and let the rubes hold the bag.

The other part of this is the marketing. It may very well be the biggest IPO ever, which will be splashy and loud and keep the bubble going longer, which is exactly something you want if you have no substance to show instead.