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The same money is going around in circles between AI giants, creating a financial structure that looks eerily familiar to anyone who lived through the dot-com era.
Bloomberg just published an interactive guide dissecting the tangled web of investments propping up the AI industry. The core finding: chip manufacturers, cloud providers, and AI developers are locked in a sprawling network of circular deals where investors fund companies that are contractually obligated to buy products from those same investors.
The money-go-round #
Nvidia reportedly agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, with OpenAI committing to purchase millions of Nvidia chips in return. Microsoft has poured over $13 billion into OpenAI, including a $10 billion infusion in early 2023, paired with a $250 billion purchase agreement for cloud services. Nvidia also took a 7% stake in CoreWeave, agreeing to buy $6.3 billion in cloud services from the company.
OpenAI has also committed to purchasing billions in AMD chips, positioning itself as a major shareholder in that company’s AI ambitions.
Nvidia is now reportedly advancing potential deals worth over $750 billion, a figure that only amplifies concerns about how sustainable this financial architecture really is.
Why the telecom comparison matters #
Bloomberg’s analysis builds on its earlier reporting from October 2025, which first detailed specific partnerships between Nvidia and OpenAI, along with AMD’s expanding role. Critics quoted in the coverage draw explicit parallels to the telecommunications sector in the late 1990s. During the telecom boom, companies like WorldCom and Global Crossing engaged in similar circular arrangements, selling capacity to each other and booking the transactions as revenue on both sides. Then demand plateaued, the music stopped, and billions in market value evaporated almost overnight.
What this means for crypto and broader markets #
Major crypto protocols and mining operations increasingly compete for the same GPU supply that AI companies are locking up through these circular deals. Nvidia’s dominance in both AI training and certain blockchain applications means that any disruption to its financial arrangements would ripple into crypto infrastructure pricing and availability.
Look at the numbers again. Nvidia alone is pursuing deals exceeding $750 billion. When OpenAI’s revenue includes spending funded by its own investors, the real organic demand signal becomes unclear. Bloomberg’s guide essentially provides the map for tracking those dependencies.
Several Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocols have pivoted toward AI integration narratives, with token valuations reflecting AI-adjacent positioning. The tokens most exposed are those whose AI partnerships mirror the same circular structures Bloomberg identified: protocol treasuries investing in AI companies that then commit to using the protocol’s infrastructure.
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