![Sam Altman onstage at OpenAI DevDay.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rskPazsfIiqoAl71TPibz6v4R4Y=/0x0:8256x5504/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73069755/Sam_Altman_keynote_OpenAI_DevDay.0.jpg)
A new report from Bloomberg says that once-again CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman’s efforts to raise billions for an AI chip venture are aimed at using that cash to develop a “network of factories” for fabrication that would stretch around the globe and involve working with unnamed “top chip manufacturers.”
A major cost and limitation for running AI models is having enough chips to handle the computations behind bots like ChatGPT or DALL-E that answer prompts and generate images. Nvidia’s value rose above $1 trillion for the first time last year, partly due to a virtual monopoly it has as GPT-4, Gemini, Llama 2, and other models depend heavily on its popular H100 GPUs.
Accordingly, the race to manufacture more high-powered chips to run complex…