Why Sam Altman Won't Be on the Hook for OpenAI's Spending Spree (www.forbes.com)

OpenAI has locked in eye-popping, multibillion-dollar compute agreements with Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD, Broadcom, Amazon and others—announcing exposure that industry observers aggregate at roughly $1.4 trillion in datacenter spending over coming years. CEO Sam Altman says he won’t be personally on the hook if those commitments aren’t met, and OpenAI’s CFO briefly suggested (then walked back) that government could be a “backstop.” Analysts point out the math is extreme: OpenAI would need roughly $577 billion in annual revenue by 2029 to justify full utilization, versus a projected ~$20 billion this year. The company has one disclosed $4 billion revolving credit facility, and many vendor deals are structured with equity swaps, usage-based billing, performance milestones and cancellable clauses—e.g., AMD’s “up to 6 GW” chip pact ( ~$90B notional tied to stock and milestones) and CoreWeave’s $22.4B agreement that can be terminated “for cause.” Significance: these arrangements reshape risk across the AI compute ecosystem. Suppliers have incentives to renegotiate or absorb unused capacity (Nvidia has already agreed to buy CoreWeave’s unsold capacity), reducing bankruptcy risk but amplifying interdependence among cloud, chip and service providers. Corporate-governance experts warn Altman’s lack of personal financial stake weakens accountability even as OpenAI pursues aggressive scaling under “scaling laws.” Practically, most big numbers are flexible—governed by performance, chip availability, power constraints and contract clauses—so the likeliest outcomes are renegotiation, selective usage, or more fundraising/IPO activity rather than a clean, immediate catastrophic unwind.