NEW YORK: The AI boom in 2025 has created unprecedented wealth for tech moguls as companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, AMD, Oracle, and others announced hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure deals over the past month. These strategic partnerships, often circular in nature, aim to secure massive GPU resources, build AI data centre capacity, and accelerate the race toward advanced artificial intelligence.
Record-breaking deals and strategic partnerships
One of the most notable deals was Nvidia’s up to $100 billion investment in OpenAI, which allows OpenAI to purchase Nvidia GPUs to expand its data centres. Similarly, AMD and OpenAI announced a strategic partnership, where OpenAI received warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, equivalent to 10% of AMD’s total stock, contingent on GPU usage over time.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explained that the global AI push demands more compute, emphasising speed and scale as critical competitive advantages. “The world needs much more compute,” Altman stated on X, adding that faster access to top-tier GPUs is essential to succeed in AI development.
Experts like Stella Biderman from EleutherAI noted that this competitive urgency is driving companies to make mutually beneficial deals, ensuring both parties are rewarded while accelerating AI infrastructure deployment.
Billionaire wealth surges amid AI boom
The AI infrastructure spending has skyrocketed valuations, with some billionaires increasing their fortunes by tens of billions in 2025. Larry Ellison of Oracle leads the surge with a $140 billion increase due to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure boom, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gained $47 billion, and Michael Dell saw a $35 billion rise through stakes in Dell and Broadcom.
Cloud computing firm CoreWeave emerged as a major beneficiary, with its five billionaire cofounders’ net worths nearly tripling thanks to a 250% share rise since March 2025. CoreWeave raised $29 billion in debt to finance infrastructure, backed by multi-year contracts with clients like Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
Valuations soar for AI companies
Private AI firms also saw massive valuation growth. OpenAI rose to a $500 billion valuation, up from $157 billion in October 2024. Rival Anthropic, which partnered with IBM, Deloitte, Amazon, and Google, reached $183 billion, up from $18 billion in late 2024. Pre-revenue AI labs like Thinking Machines and Safe Superintelligence attracted billions in funding at multibillion-dollar valuations, reflecting investor optimism about artificial general intelligence.
Risks and sustainability concerns
Despite the surge, analysts warn of substantial risks, including data centre overcapacity, customer concentration, evolving competition, and the uncertain profitability of AI models. Oracle, for instance, issued $18 billion in debt in September 2025, with S&P downgrading its outlook due to potential cash flow constraints.
Chris Moon, managing director at DigitalBridge, highlighted the unresolved issue: “The problematic thing all comes down to one issue, which is, who’s gonna take residual risk on the technology?” While companies are generating wealth and signing contracts, the long-term sustainability depends on converting AI innovation into profitable, cash-generating operations.
Conclusion
The 2025 AI infrastructure boom has reshaped the billionaire landscape, enriching founders, executives, and investors while propelling AI companies to unprecedented valuations. However, the combination of high leverage, reliance on multi-year contracts, and untested AI markets means that while fortunes are growing rapidly, the sector faces significant risks that will determine its durability in the years ahead.