OpenAI's deals are looking a little frothy

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

There have been many headline-grabbing AI deals recently: Nvidia investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI promising to buy $300 billion worth of computing power from Oracle. Oracle buying tons of chips from Nvidia.

But … where’s the money coming from? Is all this AI overhype … a bubble?

On today's show, how money flows in the AI hyperscaling flood.

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Is AI overrated?

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The messy human drama behind OpenAI

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR. There has been a whirlwind of gargantuan AI deals recently, often involving open AI.
0:18.2	Oh yes, the softly spoken wizard of chat GPT, Sam Altman, has been busy.
0:24.6	There was this $300 billion deal with the database and cloud company Oracle. Basically,
0:30.5	Open AI said it would buy $300 billion worth of computing power from Oracle. But how it
0:36.8	OpenAI pay for that, it's unclear.
0:39.5	Yeah, we're going to get into that.
0:41.1	We'll also talk about Nvidia.
0:42.9	It came in soon after, saying it would invest up to a hundred billion dollars in Open AI.
0:48.9	It's all starting to get a little heady.
0:51.0	$100 billion here, $300 billion there.
0:56.5	Invidia paying Open AI, who Open AI, who pays Invidia, we're going to have to break it down. This is the indicator from Planet Money.
1:01.7	I'm Darien Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show, Open AI's deals. We look at the
1:07.3	AI data center boom and how the world's most valuable startup is trying to win
1:12.2	the AI race.
1:13.3	This message comes from The Economist, introducing The Economist Insider, a new video offering,
1:19.3	providing unprecedented access to the Economist journalists.
1:22.6	Twice Weekly shows will feature in-depth debates and discussions with the Economist senior editors as they
1:28.4	share expertise and analysis to make sense of an increasingly complex and dangerous world.
1:34.5	More at Economist.com slash insider.
1:38.9	There's a lot going on right now.
1:41.3	Mounting economic inequality threats to democracy, environmental disaster,
1:46.5	the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to
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