Need a turbocharged stock boost? Get on side with OpenAI, or the Trump administration.
That seems to be the playbook right now as the ongoing government shutdown halts the release of key economic data creating a catalyst vacuum.
OpenAI struck a multibillion-dollar deal with Advanced Micro Devices Monday, which gives the ChatGPT creator the option to buy a 10% stake in the U.S. chip maker. AMD stock jumped 24%—the move played a big part in the S&P 500 extending its winning streak to seven days as more of the index’s companies fell than rose.
It follows Nvidia’s $100 billion OpenAI deal announced last month, which helped the AI chip giant’s stock hit a record high. Nvidia took a hit yesterday on the perceived challenge posed by AMD, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the agreement was incremental to its work with Nvidia, adding “the world needs much more compute.”
That demand and
OpenAI’s deals are driving the tech and AI boom—boosting stocks, at least for now.
Another catalyst for recent big stock moves is the Trump administration. Canadian miner Trilogy Metalsurged 175% in out-of-hours trading after the White House said it was taking a 10% stake in the company. Government stakes in Intel, MP Materials, and Lithium Americas have had a similar impact.
Beyond that, though, the stock market is in limbo. The Federal Reserve, and investors, depend on the delayed data to inform interest-rate policy. Earnings season is also yet to really get going—but it will in the coming days.
The absence of catalysts is reflected in the price of gold as the haven asset hit the $4,000 per ounce level for the first time overnight. Bitcoin also notched a record price Monday, topping $126,000.
Eventually the broader stock market
will need something other than AI deals and government stakes for lasting gains. Otherwise the rally will quickly lose power.
—Callum Keown
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OpenAI’s Deal With AMD Makes AI Chip Horse Race More Interesting
The battle for second place in the race for artificial-intelligence chip leadership just got more interesting. Analysts have long wondered whether Broadcom would take that slot after Nvidia, but the size of Advanced Micro
Devices’ latest deal with OpenAI gives AMD a leg up.
- OpenAI plans to deploy six gigawatts of AMD Instinct graphics processing units, or GPUs, over the course of the agreement, with the first one gigawatt deployment beginning in the second half of 2026. One nuclear reactor can typically generate one gigawatt of
electricity.
- AMD’s long-term deal dwarfs OpenAI’s $10 billion deal with Broadcom. AMD CEO Lisa Su called the deal a “clear validation” of the company’s technology road map and said OpenAI will use AMD chips for both training and inference (generating answers from AI models).
- AMD management expects the OpenAI agreement will allow the company to eventually generate tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue, and over $100 billion in total revenue from selling chips over the next several years.
- Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes said OpenAI’s
spending over $1 trillion in infrastructure will spur AI spending by other tech companies, pushing the total addressable market for AI compute and networking to over $2 trillion by 2030. He said it’s hard to imagine that Nvidia wouldn’t get 40%-plus of that.
What’s Next: Wall Street expects Nvidia’s data center revenue to increase from $185 billion this fiscal year ending in January to $300 billion by fiscal 2029. The AMD agreement “is all incremental to our work with NVIDIA (and we plan to increase our NVIDIA purchasing over time),” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said.
—Tae Kim, George Glover, and Janet H. Cho
Trump Signals Willingness to Cut a Deal as Shutdown Continues
President Donald Trump signaled a willingness to cut a deal with Democrats on a key issue affecting the government funding impasse. Speaking in vague terms to reporters, the president said talks with Democrats were
under way and they could lead to “good things” related to healthcare.
- Democratic leaders were quick to dispute what Trump said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it wasn’t true, but he added that Democrats were ready to make things happen if Republicans were willing to agree on getting something done on healthcare
for Americans.
- A fight over subsidies for healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act is holding up legislation and keeping the government shut down. Democrats want to extend the subsidies, which expire this year, while Republicans don’t want it in the funding bill. A Senate vote on funding failed again, so the shutdown continues.
- Trump made his remarks during an impromptu reporter Q&A in the Oval Office, an appearance that wasn’t on his official daily schedule. He said he would be willing to make a deal on healthcare subsidies for the 24 million Americans on ACA plans. “If we made the right deal. I’d make a deal, sure.”
- The shutdown is stretching into a full week with neither side appearing to budge. After the Oval Office appearance, Trump took to his social media account to say he’s “happy to work with the Democrats” but first they have to allow the government to reopen.
What’s Next: The Trump administration is looking to cut jobs permanently from the federal workforce if the shutdown continues for a while, after hundreds of thousands of workers were put on furlough. Trump said Monday so far “there hasn’t been a great deal of pain.”
—Liz Moyer and
