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OpenAI
Maker of GPT and ChatGPT; the largest consumer AI lab
OpenAI is the most commercially dominant frontier lab, running ChatGPT (700M+ weekly users by 2025) on Microsoft Azure and increasingly on its own Stargate datacenter buildout. In 2025-2026 it shipped the GPT-5 family and o-series reasoning models, and diversified compute away from Azure-exclusivity via multi-year deals with Oracle, CoreWeave, and its own chip effort with Broadcom. It restructured into a for-profit PBC while Microsoft retained a large equity stake.
Flagship model
GPT-5 / o-series
Primary cloud
Azure + Oracle + CoreWeave (Stargate)
Lead investor
Microsoft (~$13B+)
Valuation (2025)
~$300-500B range
How it fits the stack
OpenAI with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
OpenAIDepends on ↑Feeds ↓Related
OpenAI in the AI stack. OpenAI with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 13 entities, 15 relationships
- OpenAI —supplies→ AMD
- OpenAI —used by→ ChatGPT (Consumer Distribution)
- OpenAI —uses→ Common Crawl
- OpenAI —depends on→ CoreWeave (financing)
- OpenAI —hosts→ CoreWeave (financing)
- OpenAI —supplies→ CoreWeave (financing)
- OpenAI —supplies→ CoreWeave Data Centers
- GitHub Copilot —depends on→ OpenAI
- Harvey AI —uses→ OpenAI
- Harvey AI —depends on→ OpenAI
- Model routers & inference marketplaces —uses→ OpenAI
- OpenAI —partners with→ Anduril / Defense AI
- OpenAI —competes with→ Anthropic
- OpenAI —partners with→ Apple Intelligence / On-Device AI
- OpenAI —partners with→ Broadcom
Depends on ↑ · 33
suppliesAMDOpenAI committed to large AMD Instinct capacity in 2025used byChatGPT (Consumer Distribution)⬦ChatGPT is OpenAI's consumer distribution funnelusesCommon Crawl⬦Pretraining draws on Common Crawl-derived corporadepends onCoreWeave (financing)Multi-billion CoreWeave capacity contracts for GPU computehostsCoreWeave (financing)Reported ~$12B+ multi-year capacity deal with OpenAIsuppliesCoreWeave (financing)multibillion-dollar compute contracts with OpenAIsuppliesCoreWeave Data CentersMulti-billion-dollar compute contract with OpenAIhostsCrusoe EnergyAbilene Stargate site is a flagship OpenAI compute locationusesDeepSpeed / MegatronMegatron/DeepSpeed-style parallelism for large runsused byFrontier evals & benchmarkstracks/evaluates frontier model progressdepends onInference Economics / Token Margins⬦token margins / inference cost govern app-layer profitabilitysuppliesLicensed & proprietary data dealsPublisher licensing deals for training/groundingsuppliesMercorExpert-network judgment data for post-training and evalsdepends onMicrosoft AzureMicrosoft Azure was OpenAI's original exclusive cloud; still a core providerhostsMicrosoft AzurePrimary cloud backbone for OpenAI training and inferenceused byMicrosoft MaiaIntended to serve OpenAI workloads on AzureusesModel Context Protocol (MCP)adopted MCP across Agents SDK in 2025used byModel Context Protocol (MCP)OpenAI adopted MCPdepends onModel-lab compute contractsmulti-year take-or-pay compute commitments finance the buildoutdepends onNvidia Data-Center GPU (Blackwell/Rubin)⬦GPT-5/o-series trained and served on Nvidia GPUsused byNvidia Data-Center GPU (Blackwell/Rubin)⬦OpenAI trains/serves models on Nvidia GPUsdepends onNvidia-OpenAI / circular vendor financingCompute capacity tied to Nvidia fundingdepends onOracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)Multi-year ~$300B Oracle compute deal anchoring StargatehostsOracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)Central compute partner for Stargate; reported ~$300B OpenAI compute dealusesPyTorchfrontier labs build on PyTorch as the default frameworksuppliesReddit / content licensing dealsLicensed human dialogue for trainingdepends onScale AI⬦OpenAI historically sourced RLHF data (reducing post-Meta)suppliesScale AI⬦Historically supplied RLHF/labeling before neutrality concernshostsStargate ProjectPrimary AI compute buildout for OpenAIdepends onSurge AI / Mercor (expert data)Expert reasoning-trajectory datausesSurge AI / Mercor / Turing (frontier data labor)Expert raters for post-trainingusesSynthetic data & distillationReasoning-model RL relies on synthetic datadepends onTraining Data & Web Corpus⬦pretraining on web corpus, now gated by licensing/litigation
Context — capital, rivals, policy · · 38
partners withAnduril / Defense AI2024-25 defense partnership; AI militarization vectorcompetes withAnthropicDirect frontier and enterprise/coding rivalspartners withApple Intelligence / On-Device AI⬦ChatGPT integration in Apple Intelligencepartners withBroadcom⬦Co-developing custom OpenAI inference accelerators with Broadcompartners withContent & IP Licensing Deals⬦News Corp, AP, Reddit licensingcompetes withDeepSeekUndercut frontier training-cost assumptionspartners withDefense & government AIOpenAI defense/national-security dealspartners withDefense & National Security AI⬦CDAO frontier-AI awardcompetes withGoogle DeepMindChatGPT vs Gemini across consumer and APIcompetes withMeta AI (FAIR)Closed vs open-weight strategy rivalrycompetes withMicrosoft AI (MAI)MAI models hedge against sole OpenAI reliancepartners withOkloOpenAI CEO Sam Altman chairs Oklo, aligning OpenAI's power ambitions with Aurora microreactorscompetes withPerplexity AICompetes with ChatGPT searchcompetes withSakana AIEfficiency-first alternative to brute-force scalingpartners withSierra (Bret Taylor)Bret Taylor chairs OpenAI and co-founded Sierrapartners withStargate ProjectOpenAI-led JV; anchor tenant of the computepartners withUK AI Safety Institute (AISI)Pre-deployment model evaluation accesspartners withUS AI Safety Institute / CAISI (NIST)Model access/testing agreementcompetes withxAI (capital raises)Musk-founded xAI directly rivals OpenAIinvests inAI-native consumer hardware~$6.5B io acquisition for AI-native consumer deviceinvests inMGXparticipated in OpenAI mega-roundsinvests inMicrosoft~$13B+ committed; largest OpenAI backer, exclusivity loosened in 2025 PBC restructuringinvests inMicrosoft AI (MAI)Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor (~$13B+) and cloud partnerinvests inMicrosoft Azure~$13B+ investment in OpenAIinvests inNvidia⬦up to $100B committed in 2025 tied to gigawatts of Nvidia systems ('circular' financing)invests inNvidia ResearchNvidia strategic investment / compute commitment to OpenAIinvests inNvidia-OpenAI / circular vendor financingNvidia's up-to-$100B commitment to OpenAIinvests inSoftBank Groupled 2025 round at ~$500B valuationinvests inVendor-Circular Investment Loop⬦Nvidia ~$100B commitment to OpenAIrestrictsAI Copyright Litigation (NYT et al.)⬦NYT v. OpenAI threatens training-data rightsrestrictsAI Safety Institutes (US CAISI / UK AISI)Government evaluation accessrestrictsEU AI ActGPAI/systemic-model obligations shape EU deploymentrestrictsEU AI Act GPAI Code of PracticeSigned the GPAI Code of PracticerestrictsNYT v. OpenAI/Microsoft (copyright)⬦Litigation over training on copyrighted contentrestrictsUS AI Safety Institute (CAISI/NIST)Federal eval/standards for frontier releasesdesignsFrontier Safety Frameworks (RSP / Preparedness / FSF)Preparedness FrameworkdesignsGPT-5 / o-seriesOpenAI designs and trains the GPT-5 / o-series flagshipdesignsTriton (OpenAI)Triton is an OpenAI project