OpenAI partners shoulder nearly $100 billion debt to fund its AI ambitions

OpenAI’s rapid expansion is being financed largely through heavy borrowing by its partners rather than by the company itself. According to the Financial Times, suppliers and data centre operators linked to OpenAI now carry close to $100 billion in debt, even as OpenAI remains mostly debt-free.

SoftBank, Oracle, and CoreWeave have already taken on at least $30 billion in debt to invest in OpenAI, or build data centres for it. A further $28 billion in loans has been issued to groups such as Blue Owl Capital and infrastructure firms like Crusoe, which…