tech

Jon Keegan11/28/25

OpenAI’s partners shouldering $100 billion of debt, taking on all the risk

OpenAI’s ambitious plans for global AI infrastructure projects — like its series of massive Stargate AI data centers — will require tens of billions of dollars funded by debt, but you won’t find much of that on OpenAI’s balance sheet.

According to a new analysis by the Financial Times, OpenAI has somehow convinced its many partners to shoulder at least $100 billion in debt on its behalf, as well as the risks that come with it.

Partners Oracle, SoftBank, CoreWeave, Crusoe, and Blue Owl Capital are all taking on debt in the form of bonds, loans, and credit deals to meet their obligations with OpenAI for infrastructure and computing resources.

Having close ties with OpenAI has been an anchor for many publicly traded companies in recent weeks. The company’s cash burn and the rise of Gemini 3 have seemingly darkened its outlook and fostered guilt by association for many of its close partners and investors. Most notably, Oracle’s aggressive capital expenditure plans to support demand from OpenAI have sparked a sell-off in its stock while widening its credit default swap spreads.

A senior OpenAI executive told the FT: “That’s been kind of the strategy. How does [OpenAI] leverage other people’s balance sheets?”

OpenAI partners amass $100bn debt pile to fund its ambitions

Open AI, softbank, Oracle, Coreweave

Partners Oracle, SoftBank, CoreWeave, Crusoe, and Blue Owl Capital are all taking on debt in the form of bonds, loans, and credit deals to meet their obligations with OpenAI for infrastructure and computing resources.

Having close ties with OpenAI has been an anchor for many publicly traded companies in recent weeks. The company’s cash burn and the rise of Gemini 3 have seemingly darkened its outlook and fostered guilt by association for many of its close partners and investors. Most notably, Oracle’s aggressive capital expenditure plans to support demand from OpenAI have sparked a sell-off in its stock while widening its credit default swap spreads.

A senior OpenAI executive told the FT: “That’s been kind of the strategy. How does [OpenAI] leverage other people’s balance sheets?”

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We knew Tesla had been off-loading its struggling “apocalypse-proof” Cybertrucks onto CEO Elon Musk’s other companies, but now we know just how many.

The EV company sold about one in five Cybertrucks registered in the US in the fourth quarter to Musk’s other ventures, according to Bloomberg, citing data from S&P Global Mobility. The lion’s share went to SpaceX, which accounted for 1,279 of the 7,071 total registrations, while another 60 went to xAI (now part of SpaceX), Neuralink, and The Boring Company. All told, these inter-company sales represent roughly $100 million in value, and a vital lifeline for a vehicle that has failed to gain traction with the public, forcing Tesla to scale back production.

Musk’s companies have continued to scoop up the stainless steel behemoths this year, with another 158 Cybertruck purchases in January and 67 in February.

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TSMC CEO on Tesla and Intel’s Terafab: “There are no shortcuts”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reportedly asked the chip industry suppliers for his Terafab chipmaking project to move at “light speed” in an effort to help Tesla and SpaceX manufacture the AI chips they need.

On the company’s last earnings call, Musk said chip supply would be the “limiting factor” for Tesla’s growth in about three or four years. During a presentation for the Terafab last month, Musk said, “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips.” More established chipmaker Intel has since joined the effort.

Still, the world’s largest chipmaker isn’t convinced that “light speed” is physically possible. Speaking on an earnings call this morning, TSMC Chairman and CEO CC Wei offered a blunt assessment of Terafab’s ambitious timeline: “There are no shortcuts.” According to Wei, the physics of a modern foundry, which he says takes roughly five years to build and ramp, remains the ultimate speed limit, regardless of the customer’s urgency. “That’s a fundamental of the foundry industry,” he said.

Wei noted that Tesla remains a TSMC customer.

Alphabet’s 2015 investment in SpaceX is about to pay off handsomely with the company’s hotly anticipated IPO later this year, which is expected to be the largest in history.

Bloomberg reports that according to new financial filings, Alphabet’s investment could be worth up to $100 billion.

Google invested in SpaceX in 2015 when it, along with Fidelity, invested $1 billion in a round that valued SpaceX at $10 billion. At the end of 2025, Google owned just over 6% of SpaceX, per Bloomberg’s reporting on the more recent filings. That stake has likely been diluted due to SpaceX’s merger with xAI.

OpenAI pulls out of Stargate Norway, hands data center off to Microsoft

This is the third piece of Project Stargate that OpenAI is retreating from since a flurry of announcements last year.

Narvik, Norway

Barclays says autonomous couriers — think sidewalk robots and drones — could push delivery costs down to as little as $1 per order, from between $5 and $7 today and closer to $9 for traditional deliveries in high-labor-cost markets. If robots save $4 on every delivery, and enough companies start using them, the food delivery industry, including companies like DoorDash and Uber, could end up with $16 billion in extra profit every year, according to Barclays.

The catch: we’re nowhere near that world yet. Robots and drones handle less than 1% of deliveries today. Even by 2035, Barclays only sees penetration hitting around 10%.

Google’s Wing and Amazon have also been trying to crack last-mile product delivery — a reminder that this is part of a broader race to automate the most expensive leg of e-commerce.

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