The global artificial intelligence (AI) market has never looked wealthier. But beneath those record-breaking valuations sits a loop of money and influence that is quietly shaping the entire industry.
Over the past few months, OpenAI has announced a string of deals with Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, and CoreWeave worth more than $1trillion in total. These partnerships promise the computing power needed to train and deploy the next wave of AI models. Yet the same partners investing in OpenAI are also the ones selling it the chips and data centers it needs to survive.
According to Bloomberg, the agreements include around $500 billion with Nvidia, $300 billion with AMD, $300 billion with Oracle, and $22 billion with CoreWeave. Together, these deals roughly equal the size of Indonesia’s annual economy. The numbers are staggering, yes, but they prompt a simple question. Can an industry keep growing if the same money keeps moving in circles?
The web of AI financing
Analysts call this pattern circular financing. It happens when the same funds circulate between a handful of companies, creating the appearance of endless growth even when profits lag.
