OpenAI’s Blockbuster AMD Deal Is a Wager on Close to-Limitless Demand for AI

This deal is simply the most recent in a string of knowledge middle investments involving OpenAI and different tech companies. Shortly after his inauguration in January, US president Donald Trump introduced that OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle would make investments $100 billion in constructing AI information facilities on US soil and would pour as much as $500 billion into AI infrastructure over time.

The information middle gold rush hinges partially on the concept fashions will enhance in keeping with the legal guidelines of scaling—as long as they’re educated on extra information and compute. “There’s this primary story that scale is the factor, and that is been true for some time, and it would nonetheless be true,” Jonathan Koomey, a visiting professor at UC Berkeley who research computing and information middle effectivity, instructed WIRED in September, speaking about an OpenAI-Oracle deal to create three new information middle websites. “That is the guess that most of the US AI corporations are making.”

Derek Thompson, a outstanding economics reporter, famous in a latest publish that the tech trade is projected to spend round $400 billion on AI infrastructure this 12 months—whereas demand for AI providers from US shoppers stands at nearly $12 billion a 12 months, in response to one examine.

OpenAI had a strategic relationship with AMD previous to at present’s announcement. At AMD’s Advancing AI occasion in Silicon Valley in June, Altman briefly joined AMD CEO Lisa Su on stage. Su mentioned that AMD has been getting suggestions from prospects for a couple of years as the corporate has been designing the upcoming MI400 sequence of chips, and that OpenAI is a kind of marquee prospects.

Altman famous on stage that the trade’s transfer towards reasoning fashions has been placing stress on AI mannequin makers when it comes to effectivity and long-context rollouts and that OpenAI wants “tons of compute, tons of reminiscence, and tons of CPUs,” along with the Nvidia GPUs that the generative AI trade is so reliant on.

Su, at that occasion, described Altman as a “nice good friend” and an “icon in AI.”

Lauren Goode contributed to this report.

Replace 10/02/25 3:00pm ET: This story has been up to date to incorporate extra remark AMD.