004Who funds the labs?

OpenAI: the plan needs another $116B, and the plan keeps growing

OpenAI’s July plan has it burning $278B of cash over 2026–30 while revenue grows from $36B to $350B. It started the year with about $40B and closed a $122B round in March, so on its own plan it runs through that money in 2028 and needs about $116B more. The plan has moved the wrong way: the same five years were $69B of burn in its September 2025 plan and $179B in February’s. And it assumes the revenue arrives. With costs unchanged, every 10% revenue shortfall over the period adds about $84B.

Half of its new money comes from its suppliers

Of the $164B OpenAI has raised since the start of 2025, at least $80B came from companies it buys compute from: $50B from Amazon and $30B from Nvidia. Another $60B came from SoftBank, its partner in Stargate. The March round also arrives in installments: Amazon had paid $28.7B of its $50B by the end of June. Supplier money doesn’t reduce what has to be raised. It moves part of it onto the suppliers, and the capex gaps in pack 001 don’t include these investments.

Anthropic: revenue caught up, commitments are fixed

Anthropic’s revenue went from $4.6B in all of 2025 to $16.8B in the third quarter of 2026 alone, and it reported positive adjusted free cash flow for the quarter. On those figures it no longer needs outside money to run the business, but it is raising it anyway: $105B of equity this year and an IPO of up to $100B planned for November. The reason is on the other side of the ledger. It has signed at least $518B of compute over about a decade, about 80% of it non-cancellable, and bankers are pricing the IPO on $190–200B of revenue in 2028. Two customers are about a quarter of its revenue. Revenue comparisons between the two also flatter it: counted Anthropic’s way, OpenAI’s ~$50B run-rate would be ~$70B.

The debt sits one step away

Neither lab has borrowed much in its own name. OpenAI’s ~$4.7B credit line is undrawn, and Anthropic’s is growing to $15B. The borrowing happens at the companies that build and equip their capacity. Partners had lined up almost $100B of debt against OpenAI’s Stargate sites by late 2025. Lessors buying chips and building sites for Anthropic are raising $35B from Apollo and Blackstone and about $15B in Texas; Broadcom is arranging a $60B chip package that serves Anthropic among others, and will lend Anthropic up to $42B toward leasing its TPUs. That debt is repaid from the labs’ rent. It carries their credit risk without sitting on their balance sheets, or in packs 001–003.

Why packs 001–003 depend on this

About half of Oracle’s $664B backlog is OpenAI. OpenAI was about 45% of Microsoft’s commercial backlog at the end of 2025. Anthropic’s $200B Google commitment was more than 40% of Google Cloud’s backlog, and the two labs are about half of Amazon’s. That backlog is what turns into the operating cash flow in packs 001–003. For OpenAI it depends on raising another $116B or more; for Anthropic, on revenue that keeps growing into commitments it can’t cancel. Added to packs 001–003, the labs’ own need lifts the five-year total to $1.54T: see pack 005.