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.
With what raw materials?
Cool. The materials are there. It’s sand. Few other things, sure, but we have fuckloads of sand.
The limiting factor for chip production isn’t the raw materials, it’s that there’s only a handful of facilities in the world that can actually do it. Part of why there’s been such a push to build more facilities is that China really want to reincorporate Taiwan, where most of those facilities are based.