Eightco Bets $90M on OpenAI, Leaves $ORBS Bagholders Wondering "Wen Lambo?"

Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS), the Tom Lee‑blessed public company, is going all-in on the AI narrative, proving that even Nasdaq-listed entities aren't immune to a good old-fashioned hype cycle. The firm just announced a fresh $40 million dump into OpenAI, bringing its total AI bet to a cool $90 million—which is roughly 30 % of its treasury, or what we in crypto call "a significant portion of the keys."

CEO Kevin O’Donnell hailed the play as a “transformative opportunity” for shareholders, essentially offering retail a backdoor ticket to the AI carnival. The timing is, of course, impeccable: OpenAI just bagged a record $110 billion private round, hit a $730 billion valuation, and posted $20 billion in annual revenue, up from a mere $6 billion in 2024. Nothing says "alpha" like buying the top.

But Eightco isn't a one-trick AI pony. It's also backing Beast Industries, the media venture from YouTube sensation MrBeast, because why not diversify your moonshots? On the governance front, Tom Lee is joining the board, while Brett Winton, chief futurist at Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, is taking an advisory seat. The boardroom is starting to look like a who's who of "visionary" capital allocators.

Peeking under the hood, Eightco’s balance sheet is a degen's delight. It holds 277 million $WLD (making it the biggest public bagholder in the Worldcoin ecosystem), 11,068 ETH, and $76 million in cash and stablecoins. For those keeping score, the $WLD token is down about 97 % from its all-time high of $11.7, a classic "buy high, hold low" strategy playing out in real-time.

The market's verdict on this masterplan was a resounding "meh." $ORBS shares dipped 4 % to $0.90 during the day and are down roughly 46 % for the year, despite a spike in trading volume post-announcement. It seems even a $90 million bet on the future can't fight the gravitational pull of a chart that's mostly been a right-click-save situation.

So, what's next for the AI golden goose? OpenAI is eyeing a potential IPO as early as Q4 and is pivoting hard to chase enterprise customers. Applications CEO Fidji Simo said the company is “orienting aggressively” toward business use, aiming to monetize its 900 million weekly users into high-margin compute revenue. The grand plan is to sink about $600 billion into compute by 2030, targeting over $280 billion in revenue. In other words, they're going to need a bigger printer.

Disclosure: Article edited by Vivian Nguyen.