By Jacob Robbins
Publication Date: 2026-05-08 00:00:00
As OpenAI continues to prepare for an initial public offering expected this year, the unusual deals between artificial intelligence companies and their suppliers are gaining traction as questions about revenue streams come to the fore.
Rather than simply paying AI providers for products and services, these so-called circular agreements require providers to return payments to or take shares in AI companies. OpenAI has made such deals with Nvidia NVDACoreWeave CRWVand other. Competitors Anthropic and xAI have similar deals in which corporate investors provide capital in exchange for promises of future computing resource contracts.
The pattern has been clearly visible over the past six months. In March, OpenAI closed a historic $122 billion funding round with Amazon AMZN up to $50 billion and Nvidia $30 billion. OpenAI also expanded its existing $38 billion, multi-year contract with AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing unit, by $100 billion.
