Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, is reportedly raising $7 trillion from sovereign wealth funds, including the United Arab Emirates, with the aim of changing the current state of the semiconductor industry. Altman also stated that over a dozen chip manufacturing plants will entrust TSMC with management and production. This news comes in the context of Elon Musk planning to raise £6 billion for xAI and challenging OpenAI.
In a shocking revelation, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, is in discussions with sovereign wealth funds, including the government of the United Arab Emirates, to invest at least $5 to $7 trillion in semiconductor factories. The goal is to reshape the chip and AI industry to meet the endless demand for GPU and other computing power in the future. The combined market value of Apple and Microsoft, two of the world’s largest companies, is only $6 trillion, highlighting the disruptive nature and ambitious scale of this project.
According to the report, Altman has already concluded negotiations with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, TSMC, and shareholders of GlobalFoundries, among other manufacturers, and plans to build more than 10 state-of-the-art chip manufacturing plants in the next few years. TSMC, the leading foundry, will be fully entrusted with managing and utilizing advanced process technology to manufacture GPU and other semiconductor chips to address the impending chip shortage.
Rebuilding the global semiconductor order
Currently, the global semiconductor industry related to AI is dominated by companies like NVIDIA in design and TSMC in production. Sam Altman believes that this may be a major obstacle to the development of the AI industry. Therefore, he has made requests to semiconductor manufacturers and sovereign wealth fund shareholders in order to reshape the global semiconductor manufacturing order, with the primary goal of maintaining US national security.
According to an OpenAI spokesperson, the company has had “productive discussions” on global chip and infrastructure, including energy and data centers, and the entire process will be continuously reported to the United States, with US national interest and security being the top priority.
Recently, during the Lunar New Year holiday period when the Taiwan stock market was closed, TSMC’s ADR in the US stock market has risen by 23% this week. This may reflect the calculations of OpenAI and the world in the global AI battle regarding TSMC.
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