OpenAI (OPENAI)

AI research lab developing ChatGPT and GPT-class models. ~$2B/month revenue run-rate as of Mar 2026; primary AI tenant of Microsoft Azure and Oracle data centers; tenant of all OpenAI Stargate facilities.

OpenAI (OPENAI) is a tracked supply-chain name in the data-center buildout in the ai lab sector. Market capitalization is $852B. Data Center Index tracks OpenAI's capex history, project wins, and supplier exposure across the AI infrastructure buildout, refreshed daily from SEC filings and project announcements.

OpenAI data center thesis

OpenAI hit roughly $2B/month revenue by March 2026 and closed a $122B funding round at $852B post-money. As tenant of 21GW across 15 sites, including Microsoft Fairwater Wisconsin (3.3GW), Stargate Abilene (1.18GW), Stargate New Mexico (2.21GW), and the announced 5GW G42 Abu Dhabi campus, OpenAI is the single largest source of contracted DC demand on Earth, with $54.27B in committed project cost across the OpenAI-tenanted footprint.

Bull case

  • $2B/month revenue is roughly $24B annualized and the highest-growth enterprise software business in history; the contracted 21GW pipeline funds a multi-year inference and training capacity moat that no competitor can match before 2028.
  • OpenAI now signs capacity contracts directly with three different hyperscalers (Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI, Softbank Stargate Milam/Lordstown) plus Crusoe and G42; the buying power pulls through Vertiv, Eaton, Bloom Energy, and Constellation across the entire supply chain.
  • Stargate global commitments now exceed 21GW with $54B+ in announced project cost; even at a 60% take-rate against contracted capacity, this represents $32B+ of guaranteed annual operating expense flowing to the picks-and-shovels supply chain.

Bear case

  • Compute spend at $2B+/month inference run-rate gives roughly 1-2 years of cash runway against the $122B raise; if scaling laws ROI on GPT-6 class disappoints, the take-or-pay obligations on 21GW become an existential cash drain.
  • Three-hyperscaler dependency cuts both ways: any restructuring of the Microsoft revenue-share or capacity-priority terms (rumored throughout 2025) could leave OpenAI competing with Microsoft for its own contracted capacity.
  • Commoditization risk from open-weights frontier models (Llama 5, DeepSeek R3, Qwen 4) and from competing commercial labs (Anthropic, Google Gemini) compresses ChatGPT pricing power exactly when contracted DC opex steps up, margin compression at the worst time.

Thesis last reviewed 2026-05-09.

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