Wall Street analysts explain how AMD’s own stock will pay for OpenAI’s billions in chip purchases (techcrunch.com)

OpenAI agreed to help AMD refine its Instinct AI GPUs and to buy and deploy roughly 6 gigawatts of compute from AMD over multiple years — a pact AMD says is worth billions. Instead of a straight cash purchase, AMD granted OpenAI up to 160 million stock warrants that vest in tranches tied to performance and stock‑price milestones (the final tranche requires roughly a $1 trillion AMD market cap). AMD shares jumped from about $165 pre-announcement to $214 intraday, and UBS estimates that if OpenAI held every tranche the stake could be worth roughly $100 billion — though analysts expect OpenAI will likely sell shares along the way to fund GPU deliveries. The structure effectively has investors (and OpenAI’s eventual stock sales) underwriting the hardware buildout, while giving AMD a major customer validation: a stamp that its Instinct line can run OpenAI workloads. That validation, plus AMD’s push into cloud-provider partnerships, could accelerate adoption and push AMD toward a meaningful share of next‑gen data-center GPU deployments (UBS suggests up to ~30%). The deal also highlights a divergent financing dynamic vs. Nvidia, which has taken equity stakes in AI customers; here, AMD engineered a financing gambit to win scale and credibility in the competitive AI accelerator market.