Wall Street Journal reported that Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, is currently raising $7 trillion from sovereign wealth funds, including the United Arab Emirates, in an effort to reshape the semiconductor industry. Altman stated that in the future, more than ten chip manufacturing plants will be commissioned to be managed and produced by TSMC.
Previously, Financial Times reported that Elon Musk plans to raise £6 billion for xAI and challenges OpenAI.
Altman’s plan aims to address the endless demand for GPU and other computational power in the AI industry. The total market value of Apple and Microsoft is only $6 trillion, which shows the ambitious and disruptive nature of this project.
According to the report, Altman has already negotiated with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, TSMC, and shareholders of GlobalFoundries, among other manufacturers, and plans to build more than 10 advanced process chip factories within a few years. TSMC will be fully entrusted to manage and utilize advanced process technology to manufacture GPU and other semiconductor chips, in order to solve the upcoming chip shortage problem.
This plan will reshape the global semiconductor order. Currently, the AI-related chip industry is dominated by companies like NVIDIA in terms of design and TSMC in terms of production. Sam Altman believes that this may be the main reason limiting the development of the AI industry. Therefore, he has made requests to semiconductor manufacturers and sovereign wealth fund shareholders, hoping to reshape the global semiconductor manufacturing order, with a primary goal of maintaining national security in the United States.
According to an OpenAI spokesperson, the company has had “productive discussions” about global chip and infrastructure, such as energy and data centers, and the entire process will be continuously reported to the United States, prioritizing national interests and security.
During the recent lunar holiday period, the Taiwan stock market was closed, but TSMC’s ADR in the US stock market has risen by 23% this week, which may reflect the calculations of OpenAI and the world in the global AI battle concerning TSMC.
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