Ultraman is building a 7 trillion semiconductor empire? OpenAI may collaborate with Broadcom to develop AI chips

Author: Li Dan

Source: Hard AI

In February this year, the news of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raising $7 trillion to build a chip empire shocked the world. Recent news indicates that OpenAI is moving towards Altman's ambitious dream.

On Thursday, July 18th, Eastern Time, it was reported that Altman decided last year to establish a new company to develop and produce new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, as well as to help build factories for producing these chips and data centers that use them. Since then, his plans have faced numerous setbacks. There are indications that his efforts to create new chips are taking shape, but primarily from within OpenAI rather than a new company.

The media cited sources familiar with the matter, stating that OpenAI has been recruiting former Google employees who were involved in producing Google's AI chip Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), and is seeking to develop an AI server chip. OpenAI has also been in talks with chip design companies, including Broadcom, to develop new AI chips. The OpenAI team has discussed how the final chip will help realize Altman's vision for a new AI project aimed at increasing the computing power of OpenAI and other AI developers.

Some netizens commented on social media that OpenAI is aiming to compete with NVIDIA. There are also comments optimistic about Broadcom's stock price rising.

Media believes that the possibility of OpenAI developing server chips comparable to NVIDIA's is slim, and it may take years to yield results. This endeavor could also risk upsetting NVIDIA, OpenAI's most important chip supplier, but it may also provide leverage for OpenAI in future pricing negotiations with NVIDIA.

Developing new chips is just one part of Altman's plan. The media mentioned that a senior manager at TSMC revealed that discussions between Altman and TSMC executives started last year and continued into this year. They discussed whether TSMC could increase production capacity to produce more NVIDIA chips or the new AI chips proposed by Altman. TSMC executives told Altman that if he or OpenAI could commit to a large number of new chip orders, TSMC would be willing to expand chip production.

Another key part of Altman's plan is to build new data centers to accommodate the chips. He told an industry executive that he plans to establish one or more companies with external investors to cover the costs of real estate, electricity, data centers, and the deployment of dedicated AI chip servers.

Earlier reports considered Altman's $7 trillion chip empire dream to be crazy. $7 trillion is equivalent to 10% of the global GDP, nearly 14 times the total revenue of the entire semiconductor market last year. Based on the stock price calculation in February, this amount of funding could essentially buy the entire semiconductor ecosystemAcquiring companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC, Broadcom, ASML, Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, Arm, etc., with the remaining money, packaging Meta could bring back another $300 billion.

The media pointed out that many executives in the chip industry believe that Ultraman's factory expansion ambitions are unlikely to become a reality, as it requires a large amount of capital and skilled labor. For example, TSMC's CEO Wei Zhejia expressed disbelief in Ultraman's prospects at a press conference last month, stating, "Ultraman is too aggressive, I can't believe it."