According to the Financial Times, SoftBank, Oracle and CoreWeave have taken on at least $30bn to pump money into the outfit or throw up the giant sheds full of servers it needs.
Investment group Blue Owl Capital and computing infrastructure player Crusoe are juggling about $28bn in loans that hinge on their deals with the start-up.
A clutch of banks is haggling over another $38bn for Oracle and builder Vantage to splash on more OpenAI sites, according to those familiar with the talks, and the paperwork is meant to be wrapped up in the coming weeks.
Executives at the outfit insist they plan to raise a good chunk of debt to finance these contracts, although so far the bill has landed squarely on partners and their lenders.
Senior OpenAI executive said “That’s been kind of the strategy” before asking “How does [OpenAI] leverage other people’s balance sheets?”
The sheer volume of loans orbiting OpenAI draws extra attention to the $1.4 trillion in agreements it signed this year to secure computing power from chipmakers and data centre outfits for the next eight years.
These commitments make its expected annualised revenue of $20bn this year look like pocket change.
People close to the firm say the start-up itself carries barely any debt. It holds a $4bn credit line from several US banks, although it has not dipped into it.
Its craving for computing grunt keeps growing as it trains and runs the models behind its chatbot and its flashy video tools.
OpenAI said: “Building AI infrastructure is the single most important thing we can do to meet surging global demand… The current compute shortage is the single biggest constraint on OpenAI’s ability to grow.”
SoftBank, Vantage, CoreWeave, Crusoe and Blue Owl kept quiet while Oracle ignored requests for comment.
The San Francisco outfit, now crowned the world’s most valuable private company at $500bn, claims it needs even more capital to be poured into data centres, chips and power as it pursues “artificial general intelligence”.
The neat $100bn of bonds, bank loans, and private credit deals linked to OpenAI equals the net debt of the six largest corporate borrowers worldwide, including Volkswagen, Toyota, AT&T and Comcast, according to a 2024 report from asset manager Janus Henderson.
Debts tied to OpenAI may already be higher because several partners, including SoftBank and CoreWeave, borrowed even chunkier sums this year without stamping OpenAI’s name on the paperwork.
SoftBank has scraped together about $20bn this year for its AI punts, with the start-up the most significant slice. A person close to SoftBank said $1bn of its $8.5bn bridge loan for its capital injection into OpenAI has been repaid. They said several billion dollars raised this year were used to retire older bonds rather than fund new bets.
CoreWeave holds fat contracts to supply computing power to Microsoft and has borrowed more than $10bn to lease the data centre space required. Some of that capacity may wander towards OpenAI through Microsoft’s agreements.
Debts tied to the start-up look set to balloon as partners scramble to meet their vast promises.
Oracle has already flogged $18bn of corporate bonds to pay for its infrastructure pledges. Analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets reckon Larry Ellison’s tech empire will need to borrow $100bn across the next four years to deliver on its OpenAI commitments.
That haul is expected to include the $38bn debt bundle for data centres being built for Oracle by Vantage in Texas and Wisconsin.
Many data centre loans have been funnelled through special purpose vehicles, including oddities like variable interest entities, which keep investors and developers sheltered if the whole thing keels over.
People close to the talks say Vantage plans to use SPVs for the Texas and Wisconsin loans.
Blue Owl and Crusoe spun up a joint SPV to build OpenAI’s first US data centre in Abilene, Texas. The joint venture borrowed about $10bn from JPMorgan, which will be repaid through Oracle’s 17-year lease.
The loan has no recourse to Blue Owl or Crusoe, meaning JPMorgan seizes the land and the centre if Oracle stops paying.
Blue Owl also used a wholly owned SPV to borrow $18bn from mostly Japanese banks for a second site in New Mexic,o which Oracle is leasing for OpenAI.