# OpenAI's Collapse Is a Matter of 'When, Not If': Ed Zitron Warns the Stock Market Will Pay the Price > Source: > Published: 2026-07-17 12:00:19+00:00 # OpenAI's Collapse Is a Matter of 'When, Not If': Ed Zitron Warns the Stock Market Will Pay the Price ## Zitron warns that OpenAI's false claims and unfulfilled projects have fueled market hype and a supply chain crisis, exposing a pattern of deception Tech analyst and the author of *The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble*, Ed Zitron, said in an extensive blog post this week that OpenAI's collapse is a matter of time, which would make it appear like the 'Lehmann Brothers of the AI bubble.' 'Its failure would be a watershed moment — the Lehman Brothers of the AI bubble, and an event that would define the end of one epoch, the start of another, and that would shake the afflicted out of that psychosis,' Zitron wrote. He said the AI bubble is following the same pattern as any great investment bubble. 'The more money that piled in, the greater the fear of missing out, the more dollars that can be justified in turn, and the more complex and deranged the mythology becomes,' Zitron noted, while claiming that the AI bubble is kept alive by OpenAI's existence. Specifically, he targeted OpenAI's business model. The AI company plans to burn $852 billion by 2030-end, accounting for $748 billion of the remaining performance obligations of Microsoft, [Oracle](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/oracle-ai-ambitions-threatened-credit-downgrade-openai-dependency-1809001), and Amazon. It has another $70 billion of similar obligations across CoreWeave, Nebius, Cerebras, Lambda, and IREN. In 2026, OpenAI also plans to spend $50 billion, which Zitron believes is over 50% of all global AI compute spend. However, the company can only afford to pay the obligations after closing thte $122 billion funding round, of which it has received $50 billion. Zitron forecast that OpenAI's collapse will only come after 'AI data centre debt and venture capital funding has been almost entirely exhausted,' given the AI company's extreme need for funds. 'Based on my own reporting on its audited financials from 2024 and 2025, OpenAI will need to raise funding at least three more times in the next decade,' Zitron wrote, adding that the company's downfall will be driven by loss-making subscriptions, faltering advertising revenue, and elevated costs for clients, which will impact compute demand, end free ChatGPT, and make investors wary of any AI startup. ## OpenAI 'Enshit*ified' the Stock Market Zitron believes OpenAI helped SK Hynix and Samsung manufacture a supply chain crisis in 2025 using a 'phoney announcement' for a project that never materialised. Zitron highlighted that such instances happened three more times last year and blamed modern journalism for failing to identify the pattern. Zitron said OpenAI helped 'enshit*ify' the US stock market with the AI trade. For instance, Nvidia disclosed plans to invest up to $100 billion and build 10 gigawatts of data centres with OpenAI, with the first gigawatt of capacity to be deployed in H2 2026. While Nvidia's stock price jumped on the day of the deal announcement as if it was done and dusted, *The Wall Street Journal* reported a quarter later that the deal was 'on ice'. Another two months later, Nvidia pledged to invest $30 billion in private companies, and it is unclear how much OpenAI received. At the same time, AMD's October 2025 deal with OpenAI to build 6 GW of data centres with the option for OpenAI to buy up to 10% of AMD shares, vesting over 'specific milestones' was expected to bring in billions in revenue. The news buoyed AMD shares by 34%, but Zitron said he didn't find any evidence that OpenAI has purchased a single AMD GPU. Even Broadcom's 10 GW deal with OpenAI in the same month to deploy the initial GPU racks in H2 and complete deployment by 2029-end boosted its shares by 9%, but *The Information* reported in May that the company had yet to figure out how to finance the initial purchase. Last month, OpenAI and Broadcom announced the chip had been 'developed from design to production in nine months,' which Zitron believes is the kind of 'blatant lie you tell when you know nobody in the media is watching.' The analyst did not even want to talk about the $500 billion 'Stargate' project with Oracle and OpenAI, labelling it as an entirely fictional venture. Zitron mentioned that shares of [Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tech-stocks-tumble-fed-signals-higher-rates-1804673) rallied on deals that 'land somewhere between misleading and fictional,' and those who invested in them were underwater in a span of two months. He added that all three stocks have rebounded, 'thanks to similarly-questionable announcements and deals made by companies with the sole intention of boosting their stocks.' In all, Zitron is confident that OpenAI's collapse will have a 'violent, punishing effect on the entire stock market,' at a scale that scares him 'to the point I'm almost hoping I'm wrong.' © Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.