This week, Silicon Valley dominated headlines with news of enormous investments in AI infrastructure.
Nvidia announced plans to pour as much as $100 billion into OpenAI. Following that, OpenAI revealed intentions to partner with Oracle and SoftBank to establish five additional Stargate AI data centers, which will significantly expand capacity in the coming years. It later emerged that Oracle raised $18 billion through bond sales to fund these facilities.
Each of these agreements is staggering on its own, but together, they show just how far Silicon Valley is willing to go to ensure OpenAI has the resources needed to develop and operate future ChatGPT models.
On this week’s episode of Equity, Anthony Ha and I, Max Zeff, dig deeper than the headlines to explain what’s truly happening with these AI infrastructure investments.
Coincidentally, OpenAI also showcased a new, resource-heavy feature this week that could reach a wider audience if more AI data centers were available.
The company introduced Pulse—a ChatGPT feature that generates personalized morning briefings for users overnight. It’s reminiscent of a news or social media app you might check first thing in the morning, but currently, there are no user-generated posts or advertisements (for now).
Pulse belongs to a new category of OpenAI offerings that function independently, even when users aren’t actively using the ChatGPT app. OpenAI hopes to expand these features and make them accessible to free users, but is currently restricted by limited server capacity. For now, Pulse is only available to Pro subscribers paying $200 per month due to these limitations.
The bigger question is whether features like Pulse justify the massive sums—hundreds of billions of dollars—being funneled into AI data centers to back OpenAI. While the feature is impressive, that’s a significant investment to support it.
Tune in to the full episode for more insights on the sweeping AI infrastructure spending transforming Silicon Valley, the ongoing TikTok ownership drama, and the regulatory shifts impacting the tech industry’s major players.