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.
If a leap in world computing capacity is really what’s needed here then it is a tall order. Crypto has been sucking up an increasing share of that in recent years and will probably continue to do so as long as people love money and are idiots. Plus the geopolitics around Taiwan, China, annd the US are a problem as well. I’m not sure how you solve all that even with 5 trillion.