> The implication here is that the primary goal is to corner the market
You have no evidence of that. Even at face value, the idea of "cornering the market" on a depreciating asset with no long-term value isn't a war strategy, it's flushing money down the toilet. Moreover, there's a credible argument OpenAI wanted to secure capacity in an essential part of their upstream supply chain to ensure stable prices for themselves. That's not "cornering the market," either, it's securing stability for their own growth.
Apple used to buy-up almost all leading-edge semiconductor process capacity from TSMC. It wasn't to resell capacity to everyone else, it was to secure capacity for themselves (particularly for new product launches). Nvidia has been doing the same since the CUDA bubble took off (they have, in effect, two entire fabs worth of leading-edge production just for their GPUs/accelerators). Have they been "cornering" the deep sub-micron foundry market?
> the idea of "cornering the market" on a depreciating asset with no long-term value isn't a war strategy, it's flushing money down the toilet
OpenAI's entire business strategy thus far can be summarized as "flushing money down the toilet", so that isn't actually as unlikely as you're making it sound.
You have no evidence of that. Even at face value, the idea of "cornering the market" on a depreciating asset with no long-term value isn't a war strategy, it's flushing money down the toilet. Moreover, there's a credible argument OpenAI wanted to secure capacity in an essential part of their upstream supply chain to ensure stable prices for themselves. That's not "cornering the market," either, it's securing stability for their own growth.
Apple used to buy-up almost all leading-edge semiconductor process capacity from TSMC. It wasn't to resell capacity to everyone else, it was to secure capacity for themselves (particularly for new product launches). Nvidia has been doing the same since the CUDA bubble took off (they have, in effect, two entire fabs worth of leading-edge production just for their GPUs/accelerators). Have they been "cornering" the deep sub-micron foundry market?