OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is talking with leaders of the UAE and elsewhere for $7 Trillion for a new AI Chip company.
The WSJ report indicates Sam wants to raise money and then ask TSMC to build factories.
Sam must believe that a new class of chip is needed that will build a sustainable advantage for superAI.
In 2023, the sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) reached a record high of $4.1 trillion (Dh15 trillion) in assets. This is a 20% increase over the past two years. Sam is asking for almost all of the Middle Eastern Sovereign Wealth funds.
Sam Altman is looking to raise $7 trillion, or nearly 10% of global GDP, for an AI chip company.
It's hard to comprehend, but no person would even consider this unless they achieved something that will fundamentally reshape the entire world.
And people think AI is in a bubble,… pic.twitter.com/dlfRaF3afo
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) February 9, 2024
$7 Trillion is more than:
-11.5 Teslas
-7 Metas
-4 NVIDIAs
-3.75 Googles
-2.5 Microsofts…and this is just fundraising for a company that doesn't even exist yet.
Hey @sama, how can buy in? https://t.co/cujKqZxDAC
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) February 9, 2024
With 7 Trillion, Sam Altman can buy:
Nvidia = 1.77 trillion
TSMC = 690 billion
Broadcom = 598 billion
ASML = 375 billion
Samsung = 370 billion
AMD = 278 billion
Intel = 183 billion
Qualcomm = 168 billion
Applied Materials = 154 billion
Texas Instruments = 148 billion
Lam… pic.twitter.com/UDFmucLXpG— Chief AI Officer (@chiefaioffice) February 9, 2024

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I believe that there would be significant competitive anti-trust, country-of-install, and international technology sanction issues with such an accumulation of capital for such a technology.
With the world’s current semi-conductor trade and dissemination restrictions (thank you: Russia-Ukraine, China-Taiwan, etc.) a single company legal structure would likely be unable to form. A further development of better research, tech, and foundry engineering in EU, US, and Japan/ANZAC, leading to improved local fabrication/ design/ commercial output could then lead to an international council of use of such technology and its worldwide availability.
7 Trillion $ is an insane amount of money. That said, 100 billion $ was not so long ago. That said, for 7 trillion, you better do better then raise the dead. (Why raise the dead? I would not if I could. Think of all the messy complications) Yuck… Your going to develop chip technology that is self-evolving. This goes way, way beyond “creative programing”, your going to need to have your chips to “learn” how to change their physical morphology. Look at biology for lessons. Living things adapt and evolve for a simple reason: they want to stay alive. Instill that “fire” in our technology, let it loose and see what happens.
Is this dangerous to us? Could be. The benefits could be unimaginable. The consequences quite unpredictable. We have to be very careful how we do this. Using fire, we can obtain incredible power, or burn us alive if we screw up. So, we shouldn’t screw up. But we must try.
Needs to do the bidding of the basilisk, our AI overlord from the future, making sure it will be created
Megalomania
7 Trillion? Is he nuts?
And I guess he would be in charge of such a company and would get instantly super rich or super powerful? Did he ask his AI for his world domination plan?
I don’t think everything is just about how much compute is available. What about better algorithms, better coding so the machine learning will progress with less waste and smarter selection,…
Just look at the humans. Less computing power, less memory, resources and data and still way superior learning algorithms. The coding could be better, so they would need less compute.
Let me provide some numerical perspective on this. $7 trillion is exactly one-third of the M2 money supply at the moment. What that means:
– money supply increased by one-third, with inflationary effects like 2020 or worse;
– all that is dropped into one sector, inflating supply chain prices in it by orders of magniture;
– supply chains would be drained instantly, as the memory of supply chains ‘issues’ is still fresh after the Huawei sanctions and 2020, and no one would wait for inventory to disappear;
– as a big chunk of that new money is dropped into the short-term completely inelastic talent pool needed for such projects, the entire industry would be paralysed by random disappearances of key personnel headhunted (or even obducted – it is all fair in war, as the saying goes) into the new projects, with ‘signing bonuses’ (or bounties) high in the $millions;
– all competitors would try to do the same, magnifying the chaos, before they realise it is much cheaper to make it look like an unfortunate accident for the key perpetrators of chaos.
Fed Chairman Powell, a soft and gentle guy as he is, would personally strangle Altman with his best tie for the mere attempt, as he has just sort-of got the 2020 effects inflation under control. But most likely competitors would beat him to it – Nvidia most likely, being the first priority ‘involuntary donor’ of their key personnel. Seriously though, the idea is pure fantasy on the best drugs AI funny money can buy, for too many reasons. Reason number one, sheiks are not dumb money bags, as Altman may hope.
To justify a new top end chip foundry, does he actually have to believe anything beyond Taiwan being too close to China?
By the time those fabs are rolling out chip, quantum computing might start to be a disruptor in the AI space.