He most definitely did not pay $6.6B. The beauty of these OpenAI acquisitions is that they are all-stock transactions so only worth the face value in the make-believe world OpenAI investors seem to live in.
Just a guess, but I'd bet that Johnny Ive isn't exactly hurting for money. Still, the funny thing about paper money is if you have enough of it, and you're well connected (which, again, just guessing, but Johnny Ive might be) you can just borrow against it without having to make a sale or have liquid buyers. Just hope there's no margin call.
Your right it's all funny money until they are publicly traded but if they are successful it is still a ton of money. Johnny needs to feed a GulfStream - that isn't cheap;)
