AI chip deal: Reason to buy or is this just more 'money going in a circle'? (www.cnbc.com)

OpenAI announced a multiyear deal with AMD that could give the ChatGPT maker up to a 10% stake in the chipmaker via warrants for as many as 160 million shares, while committing to deploy as many as 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs in its data centers. The pact sent AMD shares up more than 30% in early trading, while rival Nvidia dipped nearly 2% despite its own recent announcement that it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to expand data-center capacity. Wall Street sees this as a major commercial win for AMD—analysts say the commitment could translate into “tens of billions” in future revenue tied to AI cloud demand. The deal is significant because it accelerates competition in the high-performance GPU market that underpins large-scale model training and inference, potentially giving AMD deeper access to hyperscale workloads and validation of its Instinct line. But some analysts warn the structure—warrants and equity ties—resembles vendor-financing dynamics from past market bubbles, raising governance and valuation concerns about “money going in a circle” (e.g., a chipmaker funding a customer that then buys its chips). For the AI/ML community this means faster supply and diversity of GPU options, but also growing scrutiny of how strategic investments and financing shape vendor lock-in, market concentration, and the true economics of AI infrastructure.