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 7 of 82 deals. 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
The 22 busiest counterparties and the 7 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)
Anthropic ⇄ Amazon $100B one way · $33B back
- $100B compute / cloud contract, 2026-04-20, announced — Amazon newsroom
- $8B equity investment, 2023-09-25, closed / funded — CNBC
- $25B equity investment, 2026-04-20, partly funded — Amazon newsroom
Anthropic ⇄ Alphabet (Google) $0B one way · $43B back
Anthropic → Google: undisclosed
- undisclosed compute / cloud contract, 2025-10-23, announced — Google Cloud press release
- undisclosed compute / cloud contract, 2026-04-06, announced — Anthropic
- $3B equity investment, 2023-10-27, closed / funded — CNBC
- $40B equity investment, 2026-04-24, partly funded — TechCrunch
Anthropic ⇄ Microsoft $30B one way · $5B back
- $30B compute / cloud contract, 2025-11-18, announced — Anthropic
- $5B equity investment, 2025-11-18, closed / funded — Anthropic
Anthropic ⇄ NVIDIA $0B one way · $10B back
Anthropic → Nvidia: undisclosed
- undisclosed chip supply deal, 2025-11-18, announced — Anthropic
- $10B equity investment, 2025-11-18, partly funded — Anthropic
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
Meta Platforms ⇄ AMD $0B one way · $0B back
- undisclosed chip supply deal, 2026-02-24, announced — AMD press release
- undisclosed equity investment, 2026-02-24, 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 |
| Anthropic | $91B | $91B | 100% | Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia |
| xAI | $6B | $0B | 0% | — |
| Mistral AI | $1.5B | $0B | 0% | — |
| Scale AI | $14.3B | $0B | 0% | — |
Announced per month
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
- CoreWeave → Core Scientific, $9B acquisition (2025-07-07) — All-stock offer announced July 2025; Core Scientific shareholders voted it down and the merger agreement was terminated 2025-10-30. CNBC · row
Private valuations (latest verified)
- OpenAI: $852B (2026-03-31) — source
$122B round closed 2026-03-31 at $852B post-money (Amazon $50B, SoftBank $30B, Nvidia $30B). Confidential draft S-1 submitted to the SEC on 2026-06-08. - Anthropic: $965B (2026-05-28) — source
Series G: $30B at $380B post-money (2026-02-12). Series H: $65B at $965B post-money (2026-05-28; run-rate revenue above $47B). Confidential draft S-1 submitted on 2026-06-01. - xAI: $250B (2026-02-02) — source
Series E of $20B closed 2026-01-06 (Nvidia and Cisco among the investors). Folded into SpaceX in an all-stock merger valuing xAI at about $250B (February 2026); SpaceX listed on 2026-06-12 as SPCX. - Mistral AI: $13.8B (2025-09-09) — source
- Scale AI: $29B (2025-06-12) — source
- Crusoe: $10B (2025-10-01) — source
- Groq: $6.9B (2025-09-17) — source
7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Bond & loan markets → Oracle | $50B Plan: $45-50B of gross proceeds in calendar 2026 - about half a one-time investment-grade bond issue, half equity and equity-linked (mandatory convertible preferred plus an at-the-market programme of up to $20B). Fiscal 2026 free cash flow was -$23.7B; S&P cut Oracle to BBB- in July 2026. | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2026-02-01 partly funded | Oracle press release · second source #685e01 |
| Blue Owl → Meta | $27B Off-balance-sheet JV project financing for the >2 GW Hyperion campus (Louisiana): Blue Owl funds own 80%, Meta 20%; ~$27B total development cost funded pro rata; Blue Owl contributed ~$7B cash and Meta took a ~$3B one-time distribution. | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2025-10-21 closed / funded | Meta IR · second source #2d24ee |
| Blue Owl → Crusoe | $15B JV project financing (equity + construction debt) with Primary Digital Infrastructure for the 1.2 GW Abilene campus; includes a JPMorgan-led $7.1B construction loan (Bloomberg, 2025-05-22). | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2025-05-21 closed / funded | Crusoe newsroom · second source #f52cfb |
| Bond & loan markets → xAI | $12.5B Reported debt component of the $20B Series E, structured through a GPU-secured SPV (lenders' security is the Nvidia hardware). | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2026-01-06 reported, not confirmed by the parties | Bloomberg single-source figure #4fb8d2 |
| Bond & loan markets → CoreWeave | $10B 'Raised more than $10 billion of unsecured debt and convertible bonds' in 2026 (incl. inaugural Eurobond) plus a $3.1B term loan and a $1B strategic investment from Jane Street; Q2 2026 interest expense $640M. | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2026-08-11 closed / funded | CoreWeave IR (Q2 2026 results) #5f2070 |
| Bond & loan markets → xAI | $5B Morgan Stanley-led loans and secured bonds (~12% yields, unrated) alongside a $5B strategic equity raise; orders ~1.5x, described as tepid demand. | Debt, guarantee or project finance | 2025-07-01 closed / funded | CNBC #a2b10c |
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.