According to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with potential investors, including the UAE government, in an attempt to push for a project aimed at improving global chip manufacturing capabilities and reshaping the global semiconductor industry.
One insider revealed that the plan is preparing to raise up to $5 trillion to $7 trillion.
In addition to funding, Ultraman also believes that OpenAI will establish partnerships with investors, chip manufacturers, and power suppliers. They will jointly raise funds to build a factory, which will be operated by chip manufacturers, and OpenAI will become an important customer of the new factory.
Insiders also revealed that the discussion is still in its early stages, and the complete list of potential investors is not yet clear. This plan may last for several years, and it is also possible that it may not succeed in the end.
And how much is 7 trillion dollars really? This makes the current global semiconductor market pale in scale. According to the latest report from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the global semiconductor industry's total sales in 2023 amounted to $526.8 billion.
Compared to the market value of listed companies, as of the close of the US stock market on February 9th, Microsoft, the support company behind OpenAI, has a total market value of 3.12 trillion yuan, making it the highest value enterprise, which is less than half of the highest amount planned by Ultraman.
Why is Ultraman obsessed with such a huge investment in chips?
Related reports indicate that the project aims to address the bottleneck that hinders the development of OpenAI - AI chips. Ultraman often complains that there are not enough AI chips to fulfill OpenAI's pursuit of General Artificial Intelligence (AGI).
At present, the mainstream AI chips used by various technology giants in the market are GPUs produced by Nvidia. Taking NVIDIA H100 as an example, the product is priced at $25000 to $30000.
According to a previous report by the Financial Times, OpenAI used approximately 25000 A100 GPUs for training GPT-4 alone, while GPT-5 requires up to 50000 H100.
In addition to its high price, the H100 has also been in a state of long-term supply shortage and delivery time is very long. Therefore, Ultraman has a high level of attention to AI chips and has previously invested in AI chip startups.
According to insiders cited by Wired, OpenAI signed a letter of intent with chip developer Rain AI as early as 2019. After the latter's chip was launched, OpenAI intends to spend $51 million to purchase it. It is reported that Rain AI may provide the first batch of AI chips to customers as early as October 2024.
"We believe that the world's demand for AI infrastructure, including chip manufacturing capabilities, energy supply, data centers, etc., has far exceeded current construction plans," Altman said in a tweet on the X platform on Wednesday
He stated that building a large-scale AI infrastructure and establishing a robust supply chain are crucial for maintaining economic competitiveness. In this regard, OpenAI will strive to provide support.