OpenAI Spends Trillion Dollars Reshaping Global Computing Power Competition Landscape

In the space between Silicon Valley's code and chips, a trillion-dollar wager over the future dominance of AI has just begun, and the chips in OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's hand far exceed anyone's imagination.

"Enough!" Facing skepticism about OpenAI's massive investments, CEO Sam Altman didn't hide his impatience during a podcast interview.

The star CEO and his team at OpenAI have committed to over $1.5 trillion in computing power investment contracts over the past year—a figure that even surpasses Canada's entire GDP.

From NVIDIA and AMD to Oracle and Amazon AWS, OpenAI has adopted an unconventional "chips first" strategy to secure a series of massive agreements with the world's top tech companies.

In the face of the AI arms race's urgency, traditional business prudence has been set aside.

01 Trillion-Dollar Bet

OpenAI's frenetic expansion in computing power began early this year and recently reached its peak.

According to the Financial Times, OpenAI has signed computing resource contracts worth approximately $1 trillion this year alone, far exceeding the company's revenue.

This figure continued to climb. By early November, OpenAI's publicly disclosed major investments over the past year have surpassed $1.5 trillion, a staggering amount.

On October 6, OpenAI reached a chip agreement with AMD that could be worth up to $300 billion, giving OpenAI the opportunity to acquire up to 10% stake in AMD.

Prior to this, OpenAI had signed similar supply contracts with companies including NVIDIA and Oracle.

02 Deal Frenzy

OpenAI's deal frenzy covers every aspect of the AI computing power industry chain, from chip manufacturers to cloud service providers.

In the chip sector, OpenAI reached a 6000 megawatt (MW) agreement with AMD, collaborated with NVIDIA to deploy at least 10 gigawatt (GW) of NVIDIA systems, and partnered with Broadcom to develop custom AI accelerators for data centers at 10 GW scale.

In cloud services, OpenAI signed a $300 billion cloud service agreement with Oracle, secured a $38 billion deal with Amazon AWS, and committed to purchasing $250 billion worth of Azure services from Microsoft.

These deals will provide OpenAI with over 20GW of computing power over the next decade, equivalent to the output of approximately 20 nuclear reactors.

03 Unconventional Operations

Notably, OpenAI employed extraordinary approaches in securing these massive deals.

CEO Sam Altman and his core executive team led the completion of chip supply transactions worth up to $1.5 trillion with almost no external advisors involved.

The team prioritized the technical aspects of chip deals, leaving financial details to be "worked out later." The core logic behind this unconventional approach is "speed above all."

From the pioneering $11.9 billion computing-power-for-equity model with CoreWeave to the $350 billion chip procurement commitment with NVIDIA, OpenAI demonstrated remarkable execution efficiency.

04 Strategic Ambitions

Behind these massive investments lies Altman's grand computing infrastructure plan.

Altman previously stated that OpenAI aims to build computing infrastructure scaling 250GW by 2033, equivalent to one-third of the United States' peak electricity consumption.

OpenAI's "circular transaction relationships" with these tech giants have also raised concerns about potential AI industry bubbles. Investors are particularly worried that US economic growth might be supported by AI data center-related expenditures.

When asked about the company's future massive funding requirements, Altman expressed in the podcast that while they are taking risks, he remains confident in the company's profit growth.

05 Profitability Questions

However, profitability remains OpenAI's biggest challenge.

Analyst Luria from US financial services firm DA Davidson stated that OpenAI simply doesn't have the capability to fulfill these contracts and might incur approximately $10 billion in losses this year.

While OpenAI has become a capital magnet in the AI industry, its massive expenditures have kept its core business in a prolonged loss-making state.

Previous market analysis projected that OpenAI's losses would exceed $5 billion in 2025.

According to Goldman Sachs forecasts, OpenAI's total funding requirements in 2026 will surge from $35 billion to approximately $114 billion, with external equity and debt financing needs skyrocketing to 75%.

06 Ecosystem Layout

Looking at OpenAI's strategic positioning, it's clear that the company has transcended the role of traditional model provider and is committed to building a complete ecological closed loop covering everything from computing power to content.

Upstream, OpenAI partners with AMD and NVIDIA to establish computing networks, pursuing computing diversification and capital synergy.

Midstream, OpenAI continues to iterate core models like GPT and Sora, perfecting its general AI product matrix.

Downstream, OpenAI launches products like ChatGPT and Sora App to directly access end-user markets, forming a full-chain ecological closed loop from computing infrastructure to model platforms, and finally to end applications.

Looking globally, as AI computing demand grows exponentially, efficient, low-cost computing services are becoming the industry's cornerstone.

Whether it's OpenAI's trillion-dollar wager or cost-effective AI computing power rental services like OmniYQ (www.omniyq.com), all are working toward the same goal: making quality computing power a democratized foundational resource in the AI era, supporting the flourishing future of intelligent technology.