1 trillion in orders plus another $350-500 billion! OpenAI "can't stop," "When you owe each company hundreds of billions of dollars, money will solve itself"?

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The wave of artificial intelligence is sweeping the globe, and OpenAI, at the eye of the storm, is shaking the technology and financial sectors with an unprecedented series of massive procurement orders.

The latest development is that OpenAI has signed another major agreement, planning to cooperate with Broadcom over the next four years to deploy 10 gigawatts of customized chips and networking equipment.

Citing informed sources, the UK's Financial Times reports that this deal may mean that, on top of the approximately $1 trillion worth of chip and data center procurement agreements OpenAI has already signed in recent months, it may need to spend an additional $350–500 billion to meet its enormous demand for building AI infrastructure.

This series of moves has once again focused the market's attention on one core question: Where does OpenAI's money come from? How can this AI startup, expected to lose about $10 billion this year, sustain its seemingly endless capital expenditures?

On October 14, former Goldman Sachs banker and Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine vividly pointed out that OpenAI's fundraising strategy is "world-class financial engineering," whose essence lies in "financial time travel."

Levine explained that traditional financial models are based on clear business plans for factories and products, but tech startups are an extreme version—they rely on a "wildly ambitious vision" and "the ability to make others believe in that vision" to attract investment. Levine likened it to entrepreneurs "placing a hand on an investor's shoulder, pointing into the distance, and whispering: 'All-knowing (AI) robots,'" leading investors to 'become enlightened.'

Take Broadcom as an example—following last night's news, Broadcom's stock price soared 11%, as investors bet that this alliance will bring hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue to the chipmaker. However, exactly how OpenAI will pay for these devices remains unclear.

If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe Broadcom $500 billion, that’s Broadcom’s problem. If you owe every major tech company hundreds of billions, that’s their problem. They’ll surely find a solution! Or you will. Money problems will solve themselves.

Levine sharply hints that OpenAI is binding suppliers’ fates to its own through enormous orders, prompting them to search for solutions together. "Money problems will solve themselves."

Additionally, Levine cited a recent plan disclosed by Altman to employees: OpenAI hopes to build 250 gigawatts of new computing power by 2033, which at current standards would cost more than $10 trillion. Altman has stated the need to create new financial instruments to fund this massive construction. Levine commented, "No! Wrong! He's already shared lots of details about his new financial instruments! He shares more every day!"

DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria remains skeptical of OpenAI's financial capacity, bluntly stating that "OpenAI has no ability to make any of these commitments," and predicts the company may lose about $10 billion this year. He believes this reflects the Silicon Valley notion of "fake it till you make it", aiming to get "many people deeply invested in OpenAI."

The 'Financial Alchemy' Behind Trillion-Dollar Orders

OpenAI’s compute procurement is not simply a cash transaction, but an elaborate form of "financial alchemy." According to calculations by the "Bear Run Fast" WeChat account, by 2029, OpenAI’s chip procurement spending with the three major chipmakers—Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom—will total as much as $285 billion.

Of this, cooperation with Nvidia is valued at about $100 billion; the deal with AMD involves 6GW of compute, estimated at about $75 billion (roughly 3 million MI450 chips); while the 10GW AI server deal with Broadcom corresponds to around $110 billion of investment (about 5.5 million customized TPU chips).

Wallstreetcn wrote that for these massive procurements, when it comes to where the money comes from, institutions like Goldman Sachs point out that OpenAI uses two main innovative models.

One model is "equity for procurement", as seen in OpenAI’s agreement with AMD. On the surface, OpenAI plans to purchase $90 billion worth of AMD Instinct series GPUs, but the core of the agreement is that AMD issues warrants to OpenAI. If AMD's stock price rises due to OpenAI’s large-scale adoption, the potential value of shares held by OpenAI could match the cost of hardware procurement, effectively letting it "receive" this compute power for free. This essentially turns hardware sales into an equity stake, linking AMD’s long-term valuation directly to OpenAI’s infrastructure growth, forming a symbiotic relationship.

The other is a "circular revenue" model, as exemplified by the partnership with Nvidia. Nvidia plans to invest as much as $100 billion into OpenAI, and this funding in turn allows OpenAI to buy Nvidia’s chips. Goldman Sachs defines this as "circular revenue"—the supplier’s capital injection ultimately cycles back as revenue.

Massive Funding Gaps and Future Uncertainties

Despite the sophisticated design of these financial instruments, OpenAI’s real funding gap remains huge.

Goldman Sachs analyzed OpenAI’s finances from two angles. From the perspective of operating cash flow, OpenAI’s annual operating infrastructure cost in 2026 will be about $35 billion, with its own revenue, supplier financing, and external equity/debt financing contributing relatively evenly.

However, once future major capital commitments—such as self-built data centers with Nvidia, and the Stargate project—are considered, OpenAI’s overall funding needs in 2026 will soar to around $114 billion for that year alone.

In this scenario, its funding structure becomes completely unbalanced, with reliance on external equity and debt financing surging to a crushing 75%, and its own revenue diluted to just 17% of the total.

As one OpenAI executive said, "Most people would rather have a small piece of a bigger cake." OpenAI’s big gamble seeks to use its disruptive AI vision as leverage to draw the entire tech ecosystem into investing. Within the next four years, its $285 billion of chip spending far exceeds its current annual revenue of around $13 billion.

This indicates that unless OpenAI finds a new business that can quickly generate massive revenue, or chip giants take an equity stake, its continued large-scale external financing will be the key to whether its grand "Stargate" plan can succeed.

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