OpenAI CEO Sam Altman undertakes global tour to secure AI computing power and funding commitments.

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman is conducting a global fundraising and supply-chain campaign to secure financing and manufacturing partners capable of meeting the startup's demand for computing capacity. In pursuit of long-term, low-cost supplies for OpenAI's multitrillion-dollar infrastructure plan, Altman has been exploring financing alternatives with supply-chain partners in discussions that remain in early stages. Since late September, he has traveled to Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan to accelerate global artificial intelligence chip-building capacity, meeting with companies including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Foxconn, Samsung, and SK Hynix—many of which are suppliers to AI chip designer Nvidia. Altman has been pushing these companies to increase production capacity and give priority to OpenAI's orders, while also planning to visit investors in the United Arab Emirates to raise money for OpenAI's infrastructure expansion and research.

Altman's current campaign echoes an earlier trip in early 2024, when he pitched infrastructure plans with a price tag of as much as $7 trillion to the same companies and sought funding from the U.A.E. At that time, industry leaders dismissed the proposal as unrealistic given how little revenue AI services generated, with TSMC Chief Executive C.C. Wei declaring Altman was "too aggressive for me to believe." This time, however, Altman is receiving substantially more support, bolstered by a blockbuster deal with Nvidia in which the chip giant agreed to lease up to five million of its AI chips to OpenAI over time and invest up to $100 billion to make it happen. This announcement lifted the stocks of chip suppliers worldwide and buttressed Altman's vision for computing power expansion.

In recent meetings with tech leaders from Samsung and SK Hynix, as well as Japanese electronics and industrial company Hitachi, Altman has secured new partnerships that have boosted the shares of all three companies. Samsung and SK Hynix became OpenAI's memory-chip partners, with the companies stating that OpenAI's overall demand could reach up to 900,000 wafers a month—more than double the current global capacity for high-bandwidth memory—and planning to co-develop AI data centers with OpenAI in South Korea. In Japan, OpenAI and Hitachi agreed that the Japanese conglomerate would support OpenAI in developing AI infrastructure, including provision of equipment for power transmission and distribution to OpenAI's data centers, while OpenAI would provide its models and other technologies to Hitachi. Altman has also held discussions about manufacturing and deployment of Nvidia's coming Rubin systems, with OpenAI expected to be among the first customers receiving these systems in the second half of 2026.

OpenAI recently disclosed to investors and business partners that it was likely to spend around $16 billion in renting computing servers this year, with expenditure potentially rising to around $400 billion in 2029. During his Middle East visit, Altman plans to meet with Abu Dhabi's investment funds MGX and Mubadala, as well as with OpenAI's operation partner G42, with potential new capital partly used to fund the Stargate data center in Abu Dhabi. The company's $500 billion valuation—now on par with global corporate companies such as Netflix and Exxon Mobil—underscores the scale of its ambitions. Last week, OpenAI revived global enthusiasm with its video-generation model Sora 2, released Tuesday, with industry participants expecting such models to drive demand for computing power far more aggressively than text-based models. Altman articulated the vision plainly: "Our vision is simple: we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week." Last month, OpenAI and Nvidia said they would deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia's computing systems for OpenAI to train and run its next generation of models, with OpenAI also announcing five new data-center sites across the U.S., built with Oracle and Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank.