OpenAI Potentially Seeking $5-7 Trillion Investment in Establishment of Fab Network

[T0@st]

Various news outlets have been keeping tabs on OpenAI's CEO—Sam Altman—the AI technology evangelist was reported to be pursuing an ambitious proprietary AI chip project in early 2024. Inside sources pointed to late-January negotiations with important investment personnel in the Middle East—many believe that OpenAI leadership is exploring the idea of establishing its own network of semiconductor production plants. Late last week, The Wall Street Journal followed up on last month's AI industry rumors: "(Altman) has another great ambition: raising trillions of dollars to reshape the global semiconductor industry. The OpenAI chief executive officer is in talks with investors including the United Arab Emirates government to raise funds for a wildly ambitious tech initiative that would boost the world's chip-building capacity, expand its ability to power AI." One anonymous insider reckons that "the project could require raising as much as $5 trillion to $7 trillion."

TSMC is reportedly in the equation—Altman allegedly conducted talks with top brass last month—their expertise in cutting edge fabrication techniques would be of great value, although it is somewhat futile to reveal too many industry secrets given the sheer scale of OpenAI's (reported) aggressive expansion plans. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) suggests that the embryonic venture is far more "open" than previously reported—a collaborative venture could be established once funding is secured, although Altman & Co. face "significant obstacles" en route. WSJ proposes that the somewhat OpenAI-centric fabrication network is best founded by a joint partnership—involving multiple investors, contract chip manufacturers (perhaps TSMC), and energy/power providers. OpenAI appears to be the "primary buyer" of resultant fabricated AI chips, with manufacturing services also offered to other clients. The scale of such an endeavor is put into perspective by WSJ's analysis (via inside sources): "Such a sum of investment would dwarf the current size of the global semiconductor industry. Global sales of chips were $527 billion last year and are expected to rise to $1 trillion annually by 2030. Global sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment—the costly machinery needed to run chip factories—last year were $100 billion, according to an estimate by the industry group SEMI."



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[mechtech]

Good luck

 

[thesmokingman]

Altman is such a clown.

 

[Dristun]

The hustle never stops, haha. Adam Neumann must be jealous - he never dreamt of burning that much money with zilch to show for it.

 

[Onasi]

Yes, I am sure that there are no other pressing problems that require such resources. Global climate change? Hunger? Potential pandemics? Maybe actually stopping pointless conflicts for the first time in human history? Nah fam, fake “AI” is surely where it’s at and worth sinking the equivalent of a GDP of a decently advanced country into.

 

[Mack4285]

Yes, I am sure that there are no other pressing problems that require such resources. Global climate change? Hunger? Potential pandemics? Maybe actually stopping pointless conflicts for the first time in human history? Nah fam, fake “AI” is surely where it’s at and worth sinking the equivalent of a GDP of a decently advanced country into.

Exactly. These people only see the $ signs of their stocks, nothing else matters for them. We desperately need this kind of money and cooperation to fight climate change. Or else it's pretty much game over. No AI can change this.

 

[GreiverBlade]

We desperately need this kind of money and cooperation to fight climate change.

imho, climate change is set in stone and also a natural occurence bound to happen, search for "Ice Age Termination Event", human only accelerated it... adapting to it is the only thing humans and nature will have to do until it cycle again.

5-7trillion eh? well, i don't diss AI but that kind of investment seeking ... let's just say : keep the AI for stable dif, "art" generation, more realistic "waifu" application and keep any "skynet event" out of the loop...
or work replacement ... (yes, even for phone scam ... it's more fun to make human scammer loose his marble, than talking to an AI Bot ... )

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
So he wants to buy intel and nvidia ?

 

[Mack4285]

imho, climate change is set in stone and also a natural occurence bound to happen, search for "Ice Age Termination Event", human only accelerated it... adapting to it is the only thing humans and nature will have to do until it cycle again.

Sure, there are natural cycles. But there is no need to manually hyper accelerate climate change before we have gotten advanced enough to deal with it, as a human race. That will just doom us, from where we cannot recover. At the current rate, it is pretty much game over already.

 

[remixedcat]

like we need more strain on power grids....Power companies are allready reluctant to connect some ai data centers now in northern virginia....

 

[A&P211]

Is nobody talking about the limit or some to be limit of transiter size, physics can only go so small. This AI hype is awesome, for my early retirement fund, but everything now is AI this and AI that.
*thank you Nvidia for cutting 2yrs from early retirement.

 

[theouto]

That's, that's just, great job Altman, you really know how to entertain us.

 

[b1k3rdude]

Altman is such a clown.

This.

 

[A&P211]

Jensen Huang took an indirect jab at Sam Altman when he said $7 trillion can buy “apparently all the GPUs.”
Lol.....

 

[theouto]

Jensen Huang took an indirect jab at Sam Altman when he said $7 trillion can buy “apparently all the GPUs.”
Lol.....

Writing in times new roman is very classy.
I like your style.

 

[Random_User]

Yes, I am sure that there are no other pressing problems that require such resources. Global climate change? Hunger? Potential pandemics? Maybe actually stopping pointless conflicts for the first time in human history? Nah fam, fake “AI” is surely where it’s at and worth sinking the equivalent of a GDP of a decently advanced country into.

Indeed. But the problem is, the politics will more likely to get in bed with corps and find the way to fund this bubble, rather than fix real problems.

Altman is such a clown.

Clown or not, the entire IT buying into this sh*t pretty fast. Just like everyone bought into the "T" company of some guy "E M" and his BS. Nobody even asking the questions, just insta jump into this bandwagon.

 

[A&P211]

Writing in times new roman is very classy.
I like your style.

I cut and paste from a news article

Indeed. But the problem is, the politics will more likely to get in bed with corps and find the way to fund this bubble, rather than fix real problems.


Clown or not, the entire IT buying into this sh*t pretty fast. Just like everyone bought into the "T" company of some guy "E M" and his BS. Nobody even asking the questions, just insta jump into this bandwagon.

It might be a bubble, but after next week I am selling all my stock shares of Nvdia, its gotten to rich for me. It cut off 2yrs from early retirement for me. Last time I bought was in Dec at $493/share, I started buying at $250. I am going back to investing in QQQ.

 

[Random_User]

Spoiler

It might be a bubble, but after next week I am selling all my stock shares of Nvdia, its gotten to rich for me. It cut off 2yrs from early retirement for me. Last time I bought was in Dec at $493/share, I started buying at $250. I am going back to investing in QQQ.

You gotta admit, that their stocks are more interesting and benefits much more, than their stuff they sell for regular consumers. That's why I called it the bubble, as it favors only stock speculative purposes.
The built in AI thing that no one needs, outside some very serious scientific stuff. People buy AI capable devices like CPUs and GPUs, to draw hotdogs and synthetic girl waifus. What a great purpose. And they pay through the nose for stuff they don't really need. So nVidia and AMD can keep inflated prices, due to the value of hyped "feature set".
People use these features , because they are already there, not because they need them. But nonetheless keep praising such meaningless stuff.
I don't even mention, that many things that AI being used for, can be easilly done manually. It's not that hard, people became intolerably lazy.

 

[Tahagomizer]

Yes, I am sure that there are no other pressing problems that require such resources. Global climate change? Hunger? Potential pandemics? Maybe actually stopping pointless conflicts for the first time in human history? Nah fam, fake “AI” is surely where it’s at and worth sinking the equivalent of a GDP of a decently advanced country into.

How can wealthy investors further monetization of those things? They already sell an opportunity for virtue signalling to governments and celebrities by selling "carbon credits" and fake "humanitarian help". Wars and pandemics make a lot of money, I personally know people who went on early retirement thanks to investing in the likes of Pfizer, Rheinmetall or Raytheon, and the serious corporate investors made tens of billions on those companies alone. In the end it boils down to earning more money for shareholders, not making the world a better and more livable place. Happy people don't spend nearly as much money as stressed, indoctrinated morons, which the whole society is turning into rather quickly.
Corporate capitalism is great, innit?