As enterprises grapple with uncertain returns from generative AI, major technology players are shifting strategy: they are investing massively in infrastructure, building data centers where capacity is quantified in gigawatts and capital outlays run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
According to Dell’Oro Group research, data center spending last year approached $500 billion, driven largely by hyperscalers doubling down on AI infrastructure. The momentum continued into 2025, with first-half spending surging 53% and 43% year-over-year to $134 billion and $158 billion.
OpenAI has emerged as a pivotal force in this infrastructure expansion. Under the White House–endorsed Stargate initiative, it recently pledged to bring seven gigawatts of AI capacity online over three years across five data center campuses, in collaboration with Oracle and SoftBank. Earlier this year, OpenAI and Oracle also launched a buildout program targeting 4.5 gigawatts of additional capacity over five years—backed by a $300 billion investment commitment.
The GPU cloud provider CoreWeave is integrated deeply into this buildout strategy: over the past six months, OpenAI doubled its compute commitments to CoreWeave, now standing at $22.4 billion. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s recent alliance with Nvidia aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of AI processing capacity beginning in late 2026, with Nvidia pledging up to $100 billion in investment as part of the partnership.
The infrastructure wave is also reshaping the competitive standing among chip makers. Nvidia, long entrenched as AI hardware’s centerpiece, has dramatically expanded its presence—growing revenues nearly eightfold in three years and ascending to the top of Gartner’s global semiconductor rankings. AMD, now in eighth place, responded by acquiring cloud infrastructure provider ZT Systems for nearly $5 billion, helping to fuel a 32% year-over-year revenue increase to $7.7 billion in Q2 2025. The company’s data center revenue alone rose to $3.3 billion, up 14%.
AMD expects its alliance with OpenAI to unlock substantial scale benefits. In the words of AMD’s Chair & CEO Lisa Su, the collaboration “can enable additional revenue from existing and new customers at scale,” with the potential to generate over $100 billion in revenue over the coming years.
