Inside OpenAI's $1.5 trillion chip deals led by Sam Altman's inner circle

Sam Altman and his top team at OpenAI struck chip and infrastructure deals worth up to $1.5 trillion with Nvidia, AMD, Oracle and others, often without help from bankers or lawyers

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and a close group of top executives struck deals worth up to $1.5 trillion, largely without input from external bankers or lawyers, according to a report by Financial Times.

 

Despite the complex and unconventional structures involved, Altman relied mainly on his trusted team to strike partnerships with Nvidia, Oracle, AMD and Broadcom for chips and computing infrastructure.

 

Altman worked closely with OpenAI president Greg Brockman, chief financial officer Sarah Friar, and Peter Hoeschele, recently promoted to lead infrastructure financing. Together, this small circle handled negotiations that many analysts have called opaque, with missing financial details and intricate links between OpenAI’s suppliers, investors, and customers, the news report said.   

 

Big tech gains, OpenAI focuses on hardware first

 

As each deal became public, Wall Street rewarded OpenAI’s partners, often with significant stock gains, based on expectations of massive future revenues. However, Altman’s focus, insiders say, was not on immediate financial gains but on ensuring OpenAI had access to the chips needed to power its artificial intelligence systems, the news report said.

 

The team has been focused on the technical aspects of the chips deals ‘first and foremost,’ with the financial details ‘coming later’, a source told Financial Times.

 

The agreements were structured over multiple years, with payments linked to milestones, giving OpenAI flexibility to scale back orders if its funding or needs changed. Executives described the goal as boosting chip production capacity, with finer financial points to be resolved later.

 

How the small team sealed massive deals

 

Insiders say Altman pitched the broader vision while Brockman and Friar handled the details. Sam is the visionary, but Greg and the team under him really pulled these deals together, a source told Financial Times.

 

Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI and former CTO at Stripe, was instrumental in shaping the partnerships. Friar, who joined from Nextdoor in 2023, brought deep financial expertise from her years at Goldman Sachs, Salesforce and Block, as well as her experience leading Nextdoor’s $4.3 billion public listing.

 

Although Altman occasionally turned to former Citigroup banker Michael Klein for fundraising advice, Klein did not work on these chip supply deals. Instead, Hoeschele, a former Deloitte consultant, led a small team focused on expanding computing power to meet Altman’s ambitious goal of 1 gigawatt a week.   

 

From CoreWeave to Nvidia

 

OpenAI’s dealmaking approach was first tested with AI cloud provider CoreWeave in March. The start-up agreed to spend $11.9 billion on CoreWeave’s computing power and, in return, received $350 million in CoreWeave stock. The partnership has since grown to over $22 billion, with CoreWeave’s valuation tripling.

 

Following this model, Altman struck similar open-ended partnerships with major chipmakers. The deals were often initiated by companies approaching OpenAI, with much of the negotiation built on **trust and direct communication** rather than lengthy legal processes.

 

For example, Nvidia and OpenAI’s massive partnership, involving a potential $100 billion investment by Nvidia in exchange for OpenAI spending $350 billion on chips, was crafted directly between Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. 

 

Strategic alliances with AMD and Oracle

 

OpenAI’s deal with AMD came after years of discussions on creating a custom chip. AMD chief executive Lisa Su revisited talks and finalised a structure granting OpenAI the option to purchase up to 10 per cent of AMD shares for just one cent each, in return for buying 6GW of chips. Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell advised OpenAI on the share purchase design, the news report said.

 

Another landmark agreement came with Oracle, valued at $300 billion over five years. The deal originated when Oracle lost a data centre client in Abilene, Texas, in 2024. OpenAI quickly took over the site, with then-Oracle Cloud head Clay Magouyrk leading the discussions.

 

Building for the future

 

To strengthen OpenAI’s financial structure for future deals, Altman has begun expanding his advisory team. In September, he hired Mike Liberatore, the former CFO of Elon Musk’s xAI, as OpenAI’s new business finance officer. Liberatore is expected to play a key role in financing upcoming infrastructure and chip partnerships, the news report said.

 

Altman’s direct, fast-moving approach — bypassing Wall Street intermediaries — has reshaped how major AI companies secure their supply chains. Whether this unconventional model can sustain OpenAI’s trillion-dollar ambitions, however, remains to be seen.