OpenAI made a flurry of deals valued at over $1 trillion over September and October 2025 to secure massive compute and infrastructure capacity for AI training and inference.
The deals, which involve some of the biggest names in tech, including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), have left many puzzled. For a startup, with a relatively limited revenue base, the scale seems staggering – raising more questions than answers about how it can afford such commitments and what the real endgame is. And with these mega caps together making up more than a fifth of the S&P 500, any serious stumble could easily ripple through the broader market.
Here’s the kicker — if OpenAI stumbles, the entire S&P 500 could feel the shock. Mega caps like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon now account for over 20% of the index’s total weight. Their stocks have soared, in part driven by AI investments and multi-billion-dollar deals with OpenAI. If those commitments wobble or go unpaid, the gains of the past few years could unravel fast. When they sneeze, the market catches a cold. If OpenAI — the spiritual bellwether of the AI boom — hits turbulence, these names could crater, pulling the index down with them.
Now, OpenAI’s recent deals make a strong case for long-term investors to reconsider the stocks of these tech majors in their portfolio.
This isn’t a small matter, so let’s slow down a bit. Below, we do two things. First, we look at the context surrounding each of the numbers more carefully. Second, we try to understand if/why this may not happen.
OpenAI’s Commitments Reviewed
To grasp the scale, let’s reconsider the numbers and specific commitments.
- OpenAI will pay Amazon $38 billion over 7 years for AWS cloud services, starting immediately
- OpenAI will pay Oracle $300 billion over 5 years for dedicated AI compute capacity, starting in 2027
- OpenAI will pay Microsoft $250 billion in Azure commitments over multiple years for AI training and inference as part of their ongoing partnership
This is indeed all promised to be spent over time. Not right away. However, indeed, OpenAI plans to spend roughly $1.4 trillion on compute infrastructure – including Google Cloud deals, Nvidia chips, deals with neo clouds, and also data center build-outs – to fuel its AI ambitions. See how Google stock compares with its peers
OpenAI’s Investors
OK. So OpenAI is spending big. Good news all around for the AI ecosystem. But who pays OpenAI first to get the ball rolling?
Nvidia, for one. $100 billion. That’s how much in progressive funding the AI chipset poster child could extend to OpenAI, starting with $10 billion once the first gigawatt (GW) of capacity is completed in 2026, scaling to support at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems.
There’s also a $40 billion financing deal announced earlier this year, led by Japan’s SoftBank.
Still, combined, the funding comes to just about $140 billion. That’s a mere 10% of OpenAI’s planned $1.4 trillion spend! There is a big question mark about where OpenAI will/can get the rest of the money.
OpenAI might be able to tap into sovereign wealth funds – the government-owned investment vehicles that manage oil revenues or trade surpluses, often seeking high-return opportunities.
Or it might just get the cash from users. This looks like a stretch, though, as OpenAI currently pulls in roughly $13 billion in annual recurring revenue — and about 70% of that comes straight from ChatGPT users paying about $20 a month for premium access. That’s chump change compared to the spending spree OpenAI has planned.
What If OpenAI Can’t Come Up with the Cash?
The impact will be seen right from the top to the bottom of the AI ecosystem – and stocks will crash.
So how big a hit could the stock market take?
Well, Amazon stock is up 14% year-to-date largely on AI/cloud hype, including the recent OpenAI deal – adding as much as 5% in one day.
Oracle stock is up 42% YTD, driven by its surprise AI backlog reveals, with a one-day spike of 36% adding over $200 billion in market cap.
Microsoft stock is up 21% YTD, boosted by Azure AI growth as well as its OpenAI ties.
The total market cap on these stocks and other companies in the OpenAI compute vendor ecosystem stands at well over $10 trillion. In fact, just their stock gains over the past year stand at over $2 trillion.
Here’s the kicker – if OpenAI stumbles, the entire S&P 500 could feel the shock. Mega caps like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon now account for more than 20% of the index’s total weight. When they sneeze, the market catches a cold. If OpenAI — the spiritual bellwether of the AI boom — hits turbulence, these names could crater, pulling the index down with them. A 20% to 30% drawdown could be very much possible.
The crash could be bigger than the gains for the entire year. It won’t be just about wiping out gains from this deal. Much bigger. It doesn’t make sense – it never does. But then, that’s how fear works. The investor who gets out first wins, so everyone wants to rush out. They want to be first.
It’s Not All Doom And Gloom, Though
Still, this negative chain reaction could be avoided. AI is on every worker’s lips. $1.4 trillion is large – but if you put it in perspective, it’s also small. Compare it with:
- The $18.5 trillion sitting in commercial bank accounts as of Oct 2025. A bulk of this amount is in low-yield accounts. They could get moving as prices start dropping.
- A massive $7.4 trillion sitting in money market funds (total assets as of Oct 2025, yielding 4% or so, but ultra-safe).
- The $3 trillion+ in sovereign wealth funds.
- The Saudi Public Investment Fund’s assets were about $1.15 trillion at the end of 2024
- Singapore’s GIC and Temasek are, together, estimated at around $1 trillion in assets under management
- Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund (KIA) is also estimated near the $1 trillion mark.
Tapping into this vast, underutilized liquidity could fuel OpenAI’s ambitions without derailing the markets, turning a potential catastrophe into a catalyst for innovation.
Dream Big, But Keep An Eye Open
Ultimately, the $1.4 trillion question isn’t just if OpenAI can raise the money, but what its spending spree reveals about the current AI-driven market. The market has enthusiastically priced in the massive new revenue streams for Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and every company across the AI ecosystem that is likely to benefit directly or indirectly.
But it seems to be ignoring the other side of the ledger: the colossal “counterparty risk.” When a single customer, especially one with a massive funding gap, accounts for such staggering future income, it should ring some alarm bells. Here’s something that should help digest the situation better: this is like selling an entire, unbuilt railroad to one giant mining company that hasn’t found the gold yet but has promised to pay you from the profits.
You will want to keep a close eye on this giant mining company.
Scrutinize all “AI Revenue.” When you see a tech giant’s stock jump on an AI deal, ask the hard question: Is this recurring revenue from thousands of customers, or is it a massive, lump-sum commitment from one or two players like OpenAI? The risk profiles are night-and-day.
Also, re-evaluate the “safe” bets. The stocks of Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle have been considered the safe way to bet on AI. This $1.4 trillion concentration of risk proves that in this new arms race, even the suppliers are taking on enormous, binary-outcome risks. A default from OpenAI would be a catastrophic, systemic event for them as well as everyone else involved in the AI value chain.
Diversification is Key
This situation is the ultimate argument for diversification. If the stability of tech titans now rests on the fundraising ability of a single startup, owning a handful of individual “AI winners” is a high-risk gamble. A more prudent strategy involves a broader portfolio of high-quality companies that can weather sector-specific turmoil—or even one that actively avoids such concentrated dependencies.
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