Follow the Money
The circular economy of AI: chipmakers invest in labs that buy chips; clouds fund labs that buy cloud; the same dollars get announced twice. 79 live deals, $2,008B at face value plus 16 with no disclosed figure — each traced to a source. Data as of 2026-08-30 · JSON.
Showing 23 of 82 deals for OpenAI. Clear.
Bubble Thermometer: 15/100 — cool
15/100 (cool): "bubble" said 0× this week (flat from 0); AI basket market spread unknown; $0B of deals announced this month.
Components: talk 0 · markets 50 · money 0 (weights 40/30/30). Each input links to where it comes from: "bubble" in this week's feed (0, prior week 0) · the AI basket against QQQ over a month · $0B announced in 2026-09. An attention index from this site's own data; it measures temperature, not the future.
Daily readings since 2026-09-16. JSON
OpenAI in focus: its curves keep their colour, the rest fade. The 22 busiest counterparties and the 17 live deals between them that match the filter. Click a company for its page, click a curve to jump to that deal and its source. Curve width scales with the amount (log); colour is the deal type; dashed means reported but not confirmed by the parties; thin means no figure was disclosed.
Money that goes around
Pairs where cash flows both ways — an investment one way, a purchase commitment back. Computed from the deal list, not curated. Open a pair for every deal and its source.
OpenAI ⇄ Microsoft $288B one way · $13B back
- $250B compute / cloud contract, 2025-10-28, announced — Microsoft blog
- $38B revenue share, 2026-04-27, closed / funded — Microsoft blog (Apr 27 2026)
- $13B equity investment, 2023-01-23, closed / funded — Microsoft blog (Oct 28 2025)
OpenAI ⇄ Amazon $138B one way · $50B back
- $38B compute / cloud contract, 2025-11-03, announced — Amazon newsroom
- $100B compute / cloud contract, 2026-02-27, announced — Amazon newsroom
- $50B equity investment, 2026-02-27, closed / funded — Amazon newsroom
OpenAI ⇄ NVIDIA $0B one way · $135B back
- undisclosed chip supply deal, 2025-09-22, announced — NVIDIA newsroom
- $30B equity investment, 2026-02-27, closed / funded — CNBC
- $105B debt, guarantee or project finance, 2026-08-17, announced — CNBC (citing Nvidia 8-K)
OpenAI ⇄ AMD $0B one way · $0B back
- undisclosed chip supply deal, 2025-10-06, announced — AMD press release
- undisclosed equity investment, 2025-10-06, announced — AMD press release
Circularity score
Of the disclosed funding each lab took from named investors listed here, how much came from companies the lab also pays for compute or chips. Round totals from funds are not broken out, so this is the strategic-money share, not a share of everything ever raised. Every number links to the deals behind it.
| Lab | Named funding | From its own vendors | Circularity | Which vendors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | $153B | $93B | 61% | Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon |
Announced per month — OpenAI
Face value as announced; the grey stubs are deals later cancelled or never closed, which stay out of the total. Click a month to list its deals.
Biggest counterparties
Announced and reported amounts at face value; "up to" commitments count in full — that is how the headlines count them, and why every row carries its notes. Every company name is a page.
Deals that shrank or died
- Microsoft → OpenAI, undisclosed revenue share (2026-04-27) — Microsoft's revenue share to OpenAI (on Azure OpenAI / product revenue) ended: 'Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.' Amount never disclosed. Microsoft blog (Apr 27 2026) · row
- NVIDIA → OpenAI, $100B equity investment (2025-09-22) — Letter of intent only: 'up to $100B progressively as each gigawatt is deployed' (10 GW). Never became a definitive agreement; Huang, 2026-03-04: 'probably not in the cards'. Superseded by a $30B equity cheque and the $105B lease guarantee. NVIDIA newsroom · row
Private valuations (latest verified)
23 deals, with sources
Amounts link to the source they come from; companies link to their pages; types, months and statuses filter the page; the # is the deal's anchor.
| Deal | Amount ▾ | Type | Announced | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI → Oracle | $300B Reported by the WSJ (five years from 2027, about 4.5 GW); neither company has confirmed the figure. S&P says OpenAI is about half of Oracle's $638B backlog. A planned ~600 MW expansion of the Abilene site was dropped in March 2026. | Compute / cloud contract | 2025-09-10 reported, not confirmed by the parties | DCD, citing WSJ · second source single-source figure #bf5a91 |
| OpenAI → Microsoft | $250B 'Incremental $250B of Azure services' contracted; Microsoft lost right of first refusal on OpenAI compute. April 2026 amendment kept Azure as primary cloud / first-ship platform; Feb 2026 joint statement: Azure remains exclusive for stateless OpenAI API calls. | Compute / cloud contract | 2025-10-28 announced | Microsoft blog · second source #f86156 |
| Nvidia → OpenAI | $105B Up to. A lease GUARANTEE, not a loan: Nvidia stands behind up to $105B of OpenAI's lease obligations for an SB Energy data-center campus in Pike County, Ohio (first capacity due 2028), and pays only if OpenAI does not. Reported at about $250B in July and 'under $120B' on Aug 14 before Nvidia's filing set the cap. | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2026-08-17 announced | CNBC (citing Nvidia 8-K) · second source #ac57b2 |
| OpenAI → Amazon | $100B Expansion of the $38B agreement 'by $100 billion over 8 years', including ~2 GW of Trainium capacity. | Compute / cloud contract | 2026-02-27 announced | Amazon newsroom #b7e6a2 |
| Nvidia → OpenAI | $100B Letter of intent only: 'up to $100B progressively as each gigawatt is deployed' (10 GW). Never became a definitive agreement; Huang, 2026-03-04: 'probably not in the cards'. Superseded by a $30B equity cheque and the $105B lease guarantee. | Equity investment | 2025-09-22 cancelled / never closed | NVIDIA newsroom · second source #3edc34 |
| Amazon → OpenAI | $50B $15B upfront + $35B once conditions were met (reported: an IPO or an AGI milestone). Amazon's Q2 2026 report: $15B in Q1, $13.7B in Q2, the remaining $21.3B after June 30 - fully funded by July 2026. | Equity investment | 2026-02-27 closed / funded | Amazon newsroom · second source single-source figure #75ec78 |
| OpenAI → US government | $42.6B PROPOSAL ONLY (Financial Times, 2026-07-02): a 5% stake - about $42.6B at $852B - in a public-wealth vehicle. Early stage, would need Congress; not executed. | Government stake / grant | 2026-07-02 reported, not confirmed by the parties | CNBC, citing Financial Times · second source single-source figure #082e42 |
| OpenAI → Microsoft | $38B Cap, reported. Companies confirmed (2026-04-27) revenue share continues through 2030 'at the same percentage but subject to a total cap', independent of AGI; the ~20% rate and $38B cap are per The Information (May 2026), not confirmed by either company. | Revenue share | 2026-04-27 closed / funded | Microsoft blog (Apr 27 2026) · second source single-source figure #047352 |
| OpenAI → Amazon | $38B Seven-year AWS agreement; hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs; all capacity targeted before end-2026. | Compute / cloud contract | 2025-11-03 announced | Amazon newsroom #075d0d |
| Nvidia → OpenAI | $30B Part of the $122B round closed 2026-03-31 at $852B post-money (Amazon $50B, SoftBank $30B, Nvidia $30B). Huang: this 'might be the last' Nvidia investment in OpenAI. | Equity investment | 2026-02-27 closed / funded | CNBC · second source #bd0a22 |
| SoftBank → OpenAI | $30B Co-led the 2026 round ($110B announced 2026-02-27; closed 2026-03-31 at $122B and $852B post-money). | Equity investment | 2026-02-27 closed / funded | CNBC · second source #7cff70 |
| SoftBank → OpenAI | $30B March 2025 commitment (led the $40B round at $300B post-money): $7.5B at first closing (Apr 2025) + $22.5B at second closing (2025-12-26) via Vision Fund 2; co-investors added $11B (total $41B). SoftBank's stake ~11% after this. Funded partly by selling its entire Nvidia stake ($5.83B) and T-Mobile shares. | Equity investment | 2025-03-31 closed / funded | SoftBank Group press release · second source #8f5feb |
| OpenAI → CoreWeave | $22.4B Up to; cumulative: $11.9B (Mar 2025, OpenAI also received ~$350M of CoreWeave stock) + $4B (May 2025) + $6.5B (Sept 2025). | Compute / cloud contract | 2025-03-10 announced | CoreWeave IR · second source #86b4a0 |
| OpenAI → Stargate JV | $19B Reported (The Information); see softbank->stargate. | Equity investment | 2025-01-21 reported, not confirmed by the parties | DCD, citing The Information single-source figure #0a2c1c |
| Microsoft → OpenAI | $13B $13B committed ($1B in 2019 + $10B in January 2023); Microsoft's 10-Q for the quarter to 2025-09-30 put the funded amount at $11.6B. The October 2025 recapitalization left Microsoft with about 27% of OpenAI Group PBC (as-converted, diluted). | Equity investment | 2023-01-23 closed / funded | Microsoft blog (Oct 28 2025) · second source #df0dba |
| OpenAI → Cerebras | $10B 'Worth over $10B' per CNBC; the companies' own announcement gives 750 MW of wafer-scale inference capacity through 2028 and no dollar figure. Cerebras listed on 2026-05-14. | Compute / cloud contract | 2026-01-14 announced | CNBC · second source single-source figure #b8d762 |
| OpenAI → io (Jony Ive) | $6.5B All-stock; announced 2025-05-21 (reported $6.4-6.5B), closed 2025-07-09. OpenAI's largest acquisition. | Acquisition | 2025-05-21 closed / funded | Bloomberg · second source #4443c5 |
| SoftBank → OpenAI | $3B PER YEAR. Taxonomy stretch: this is enterprise product/licensing spend, not compute. SoftBank Group 'will spend $3 billion US annually to deploy OpenAI's solutions across its group companies' (Cristal intelligence; SB OpenAI Japan JV). | Compute / cloud contract | 2025-02-03 announced | SoftBank Group press release #8deda2 |
| Microsoft → OpenAI | undisclosed Microsoft's revenue share to OpenAI (on Azure OpenAI / product revenue) ended: 'Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.' Amount never disclosed. | Revenue share | 2026-04-27 cancelled / never closed | Microsoft blog (Apr 27 2026) #b22ddc |
| OpenAI → Broadcom | undisclosed 10 GW of OpenAI-designed accelerators and Broadcom Ethernet racks; deployment 2H 2026 through end-2029. No dollar figure disclosed. | Chip supply deal | 2025-10-13 announced | Broadcom IR #ad3e8c |
| OpenAI → AMD | undisclosed 6 GW of AMD Instinct GPUs across generations; first 1 GW of MI450 in 2H 2026. Dollar value undisclosed (analysts: tens of billions per GW). | Chip supply deal | 2025-10-06 announced | AMD press release · second source #6d1cba |
| AMD → OpenAI | undisclosed Warrant for up to 160M AMD shares (~10% of AMD) at $0.01, vesting in tranches on GPU purchase milestones AND AMD share-price targets; exercisable through 2030-10-05. Value depends on vesting; no cash changes hands upfront. | Equity investment | 2025-10-06 announced | AMD press release · second source #ee6ff4 |
| OpenAI → Nvidia | undisclosed At least 10 GW of Nvidia systems; first GW on Vera Rubin targeted 2H 2026. Dollar value undisclosed; LOI-level commitment, equity leg dropped. | Chip supply deal | 2025-09-22 announced | NVIDIA newsroom single-source figure #e196b0 |
Deal Watch — reported in the last 45 days (automatic, unverified)
Headlines from the feed go through a model that extracts who-pays-whom; a report appears here only when two different publishers agree on the parties and the amounts agree within 25%. Every publisher name links to the headline. Nothing in this box is in the verified graph above until a data review confirms it against a primary source.
No two-source reports in the window — the extractor needs an AI provider key.
The bubble reads
- AI's $600B Question — Sequoia Capital (David Cahn), 2024-06-20. Annualised AI infrastructure spend implies about $600B of yearly AI revenue is needed to earn a return; most of it is missing.
- The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 — MIT NANDA, 2025-07. Despite $30-40B of enterprise GenAI spend, about 95% of pilots show no measurable P&L impact.
- Bridging a $1.5tr Data Center Financing Gap — Morgan Stanley Research, 2025-08. About $2.9T of global data-center capex through 2028, only about half fundable from hyperscaler cash flow; the rest must come from bonds, private credit and securitisation.
- $2 trillion in new revenue needed to fund AI's scaling trend — Bain & Company, 6th Global Technology Report, 2025-09-23. Meeting projected 2030 compute demand needs about $2T of annual AI revenue; the industry is about $800B short.
- IMF and Bank of England join growing chorus warning of an AI bubble — IMF Global Financial Stability Report / Bank of England FPC, via CNBC, 2025-10-09. Both flagged AI-concentrated equity valuations comparable to the 2000 dot-com peak and the risk of an abrupt correction.
- World Outlook: '1999 meets 1990' — Deutsche Bank Research (Jim Reid), via Investing.com, 2026-06-06. Frames 2026 as 1999-style tech enthusiasm colliding with a 1990-style oil shock, with an AI investment boom propping up US growth.
Method: a deal is listed only when it traces to a press release, an SEC filing, or top-tier reporting, with its date and status. Amounts are as announced or credibly reported; status says whether a deal closed, is staged, or was only reported. Not investment advice.