Recently, according to Wall Street**, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is negotiating with potential investors, including the United Arab Emirates**, with the intention of raising up to $7 trillion to promote the improvement of global chip manufacturing capacity, thereby reshaping the semiconductor industry landscape.
The sheer scale of funding for this ambitious project is staggering, even exceeding the current size of the global semiconductor market combined. For reference, the global semiconductor industry sales in 2023 totaled $526.8 billion, which makes Altman's plans seem unusually large in comparison. Even when compared to Microsoft, the world's largest market capitalization, this figure is nearly twice as high.
Why did Altman come up with such a huge investment plan? This stems from his urgent need for AI chips. On the road of OpenAI's pursuit of general artificial intelligence (AGI), AI chips have become a bottleneck. At present, the mainstream AI chip on the market is NVIDIA's GPU, but OpenAI has a great demand for it when training large language models, and the market cannot meet it.
To solve this problem, Altman considered radically improving chip manufacturing capabilities. He plans to establish in-depth cooperative relationships with investors, chipmakers and power companies to jointly raise funds to build new chip manufacturing plants. The new factory will be operated by the chipmaker, and OpenAI will be an important customer for it.
However, the program also faces a number of challenges. First of all, raising $7 trillion in capital is a daunting task that needs to attract investors on a global scale. Second, even with the funds in place, building and managing an efficient chip manufacturing plant requires a lot of technology and experience. Finally, it is also unknown whether the chips produced by the new factory will be able to meet OpenAI's needs and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Despite the difficulties, Altman is confident. In a recent tweet, he said: "We believe that the world's demand for AI infrastructure has far exceeded current construction plans. He stressed that building a large-scale AI infrastructure and a robust ** chain is essential to maintain the competitiveness of the economy, and OpenAI will provide full support for this.
The sheer scale of funding for this ambitious project is staggering, even exceeding the current size of the global semiconductor market combined. For reference, the global semiconductor industry sales in 2023 totaled $526.8 billion, which makes Altman's plans seem unusually large in comparison. Even when compared to Microsoft, the world's largest market capitalization, this figure is nearly twice as high.
Why did Altman come up with such a huge investment plan? This stems from his urgent need for AI chips. On the road of OpenAI's pursuit of general artificial intelligence (AGI), AI chips have become a bottleneck. At present, the mainstream AI chip on the market is NVIDIA's GPU, but OpenAI has a great demand for it when training large language models, and the market cannot meet it.
To solve this problem, Altman considered radically improving chip manufacturing capabilities. He plans to establish in-depth cooperative relationships with investors, chipmakers and power companies to jointly raise funds to build new chip manufacturing plants. The new factory will be operated by the chipmaker, and OpenAI will be an important customer for it.
However, the program also faces a number of challenges. First of all, raising $7 trillion in capital is a daunting task that needs to attract investors on a global scale. Second, even with the funds in place, building and managing an efficient chip manufacturing plant requires a lot of technology and experience. Finally, it is also unknown whether the chips produced by the new factory will be able to meet OpenAI's needs and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Despite the difficulties, Altman is confident. In a recent tweet, he said: "We believe that the world's demand for AI infrastructure has far exceeded current construction plans. He stressed that building a large-scale AI infrastructure and a robust ** chain is essential to maintain the competitiveness of the economy, and OpenAI will provide full support for this.
While the future of this initiative remains uncertain, there is no doubt that if successful, it will have a profound impact on the global semiconductor industry and could push AI technology into a new phase of development.