OpenAI's $1T web: the company is becoming a hyperscaler with deals spanning every major tech player
Oct 7, 2025
Key Points
- OpenAI operates as a hyperscaler with partnerships spanning NVIDIA, Oracle, Microsoft, SoftBank, and others, concentrating major tech valuations on a single private company's continued success.
- OpenAI's private status shields it from mark-to-market pressure during downturns, while public partners face immediate equity drawdowns and shareholder scrutiny that historical corrections have proven brutal.
- The system assumes a shallow correction; a deeper downturn could expose structural risk in an architecture where nearly all major tech companies depend on one private entity's stability.
Summary
OpenAI is becoming a hyperscaler with partnership deals spanning nearly every major technology company, creating an unusually concentrated web of dependencies across the industry.
The Financial Times documented that OpenAI operates as 12 distinct internal organizations while maintaining partnerships with NVIDIA, Oracle, CoreWeave, Broadcom, AMD, SoftBank, and Microsoft. A meaningful portion of current market capitalizations for major public tech companies are now tied, directly or indirectly, to OpenAI's success and continued operation.
This concentration creates an unusual asymmetry in a downturn. OpenAI remains private while nearly all its partners are public. If a correction materializes, OpenAI could avoid the mark-to-market pressure that public companies face. Employees wouldn't watch equity value crater in real time, the company wouldn't face quarterly earnings pressure, and it could weather extended periods of negative or zero margins without shareholder scrutiny. Public partners like NVIDIA or Microsoft would face immediate drawdowns and shareholder pressure.
Past tech downturns offer context. Amazon declined roughly 90% between 2000 and 2002. Oracle fell more than 80% in the same window. Both survived and eventually built massive value, but employees and shareholders endured severe mark-to-market losses along the way. Akamai IPO'd at $300 per share in 1999, fell 99%, and eventually recovered to deliver a 50x gain over two decades. The intervening years were brutal for anyone holding equity.
Whether OpenAI's private status is genuinely protective in a correction remains unclear. Being public does impose emotional and liquidity costs during a drawdown, but it also forces discipline and provides transparency. The real risk may be less about the structure than about the assumption underlying the entire web: that when the correction comes, it will be shallow enough that the system holds.