OpenAI's spending spree is powering tech industry. Oracle is the latest winner (www.cnbc.com)

Oracle’s recent stock surge was driven largely by disclosure that OpenAI will be a major cloud customer, crystallizing months of market speculation. In its earnings report Oracle pointed to multibillion-dollar contracts including one tied to OpenAI; filings and reporting suggest OpenAI agreed to develop 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data-center capacity with Oracle and to spend roughly $300 billion on computing power over about five years starting in 2027. That deal helped propel Oracle’s performance obligations — a proxy for contracted future revenue — up 359% year-over-year to $455 billion and pushed its market cap toward the trillion-dollar club. Broadcom, Microsoft and Nvidia have seen similar boosts as OpenAI’s outsized demand ripples through cloud, chip and infrastructure vendors. For the AI community this underscores two big trends: runaway demand for large-scale compute (GPUs and datacenter capacity) that is reshaping hyperscaler economics, and the concentration risk of a single private company dictating where billions flow. OpenAI’s $10B ARR milestone and internal forecasts (CNBC-cited projection to $125B by 2029) imply sustained pressure on cloud supply chains, but analysts warn the startup remains a cash-burning entity governed by a nonprofit parent with fundraising limits. The scale of OpenAI’s commitments (also spread across CoreWeave, Google and a joint “Stargate” effort with Oracle and SoftBank) creates huge opportunities for vendors — and meaningful financial and operational risks for customers overly dependent on one buyer.