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This and stock buybacks make me question company valuations
Stock buyback isn't a total scam as it seems, but it does mean "we can't figure out any productive use case for this cash in advancing R&D or scaling our business anymore" which is still pretty worrying
Upvote because can someone explain to someone as dense as me, whether or not this is likely to make some likely AI bubble worse? Is this just how industry allocates capital?
These deals certainly make the bubble look larger because people are double-counting revenue. They also seem to be triggering extreme investor FOMO.
Bubble's only bad if you get out at the wrong time.
Upvote because can someone explain to someone as dense as me, whether or not this is likely to make some likely AI bubble worse? Is this just how industry allocates capital?
Now once these folks don't get 800B per year in revenue and the money runs out, all of the banks go as well. But don't worry - they'll get bailed out with our money...
Every day one or more article wondering if/when the AI boom will transform into a bursting bubble.
Maybe people are crying wolf or misreading the situation.
My gut feeling is that yes, this is indeed a bubble and behind closed doors the CEOs are in panic mode, weirdly repeating past and well known mistakes
For an interesting interpretation of the recent AMD-OpenAI deal, see Matt Levine's column from a few days ago: > OpenAI: We would like six gigawatts worth of your chips to do inference. > AMD: Terrific. That will be $78 billion. How would you like to pay? > OpenAI: Well, we were thinking that we would announce the deal, and that would add $78 billion to the value of your company, which should cover it. > AMD: … > Ope…
There's no way someone would be stupid enough to part with $x worth of product and $ 0.5 x worth of stock in exchange for $x, is there? Honestly, it's stupid to even make such an offer. What prevents AMD from turning it around on them? > AMD: Oh, since you put it like that, why don't you pay us $x for the chips and give us $ 0.5 x worth of stock? When your market cap rises by $ 0.5 x you'll get the money for those st…
Matt's telling is a little facetious, so the exact negotiation probably didn't go like that. More importantly, OpenAI has better options. If they want to pay AMD cash for chips, they could do that without also giving up their equity. The same can't be said for AMD. They're the second choice when it comes to GPUs, and they're desperate for market share, so they're willing to cut deals like this. Without this deal OpenAI probably would have bought Nvidia chips with cash.
I don't understand why they are calling these deals circular. OpenAI is buying Nvidia and AMD chips. Oracle is also buying Nvidia chips. OpenAI is buying datacenters from Oracle, which will be powered by the chips Oracle buys from Nvidia. This is one directional: hardware makers (Nvidia and AMD) sell either to datacenter makers (Oracle), or to AI firms (like OpenAI). That's it. No circular deals. But "circular deals"…
I prefer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-07/openai-s-... which shows the circularity in the deals. A stronger counterpoint to the circular deals suggestion is at the end of the article, which reads > Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s CEO, acknowledged the circular financing worries in a recent interview with Bloomberg News, but said the public concerns will dissipate as more businesses adopt AI. > “When M…
On the surface, the circular financing seems worrying but once you dig into it, it seems quite benign, tbh. NVIDIA is handing out GPUs into OpenAI, in return for stock/future revenue, whichever way you want to slice it. OpenAI has wonky unit economics, yes, but they're growing at ~100% YoY, so it all checks out, if you ask me.
If NVIDIA has a stake in the company, they are less likely to do something like start brewing inference chips in house with the help of the foundry partner and a provider of vanilla chip designs. The company also gets a huge cash injection that is somewhat contingent on not doing that, and hey, they have a fresh pile of cash for cutting edge chips so whatever, right? My first thought was that these deals had more to do with that than anything else.
That aspect may end up being a bit illusory in the end. But then again, Nvidia has been proven to be quite skilled at building out and defending their ecosystem, sometimes through ruthless means, so maybe it persists (and I'm not sure that's a good thing). China certainly isn't a threat to throw a wrench in this situation... the entire US geopolitical complex will ensure that is the case.
On the surface, the circular financing seems worrying but once you dig into it, it seems quite benign, tbh. NVIDIA is handing out GPUs into OpenAI, in return for stock/future revenue, whichever way you want to slice it. OpenAI has wonky unit economics, yes, but they're growing at ~100% YoY, so it all checks out, if you ask me.
The only reason this works is if we are the useful idiots buying up the stock.
Upvote because can someone explain to someone as dense as me, whether or not this is likely to make some likely AI bubble worse? Is this just how industry allocates capital?
The money between OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, AMD is not circulating. There is no cashflow, only future commitments that may (and quite likely will) collapse. Yet the stock market & media react as if it's a sure thing. Even in the criticisms of these deals, the hype is affirmed.
This is the same problem as Enron's accounting, minus the fraud. (No need for fraudulent accounting when people simply don't read the fine print.)