Investor Gavin Baker: No One in the AI Supply Chain Takes OpenAI and Anthropic's Trillion-Dollar Promises Seriously

On October 11, investor Gavin Baker argued that no one in the AI supply chain takes seriously the roughly $1 trillion in unfunded spending "commitments" from OpenAI and Anthropic combined. He noted, for example, that after Sam Altman made promises to TSMC, executives there dismissed his remarks as those of someone who doesn't understand technology.

Confirmed

• Baker said the $1 trillion in spending commitments currently lacks funding, and supply chain participants generally do not view them as credible pledges.
• In a discussion with @BetterIRR, @BetterIRR questioned the $500 billion flowing into non-lab AI startups, arguing that no one knows real demand and the money is artificially inflating it, and expressed concern that if OpenAI and Anthropic collapse, a large share of AI investment would be dragged down.
• Baker responded that if these two "bellwether" companies actually failed, it would benefit all future AI investors.
• Baker added that tokens from open-weight models are high-margin and growing far faster than OpenAI's and Anthropic's, pushing back against the opposing view.

Why it matters

• The exchange cuts to the gap between today's AI capex pledges and actual financial capacity, and to the spillover effects on the entire VC ecosystem if the leading labs run into trouble — a key signal in the AI bubble debate.

2026-10-11 ~ 2026-10-11 · 5 related posts

• [source] No one in AI supply chain takes OpenAI and Anthropic's $1T unfunded commitments seriously — GavinSBaker · 2026-10-11
• [source] Open-weight tokens are highly profitable and growing faster than OpenAI and Anthropic — GavinSBaker · 2026-10-11
• VC Gavin Baker: OpenAI and Anthropic Failing Would Actually Be Best for Future VC Investments — BetterIRR · 2026-10-11

2 near-duplicate retellings: GavinSBaker · GavinSBaker