OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with investors, including from the United Arab Emirates, to raise between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in funding. The goal, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, is to increase the world’s chip manufacturing capacity and enhance AI capabilities.
The fundraising efforts are part of a broader strategy to address OpenAI’s growth constraints, particularly the scarcity of AI chips needed for training large language models like ChatGPT.
Altman’s proposal is said to include forming a partnership with investors, chip manufacturers, and power providers to finance the construction of chip foundries, which would then be operated by the chip manufacturers.
It may not reflect some of the weirdness, but it illustrates the absurdity of the scale well.
Some other comparisons: It’s about a third of all US economic activity
It’s about fifteen times more than the total economic activity around all electronic chips.
It’s five to seven times more money than all the nations’ military spending combined.
Even adjusted for inflation, it’s about 20 to 30 times more money than spent on all the Apollo missions combined.
Adjusted for inflation, it’s about six to nine times the amount spent on the new deal.
This is a stupid amount of money no matter how you account with nothing close to compare.
