Tech Brew Ride Home - Ouroboros All The Way Down?

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Nvidia is investing $100B in OpenAI, and there are a billion angles to that fact, so get ready to dive into it. Why were there giant sim farms popping up around NYC? The new AI to help you with Candy Crush, I guess. And new buzzword alert: say hello to “workslop.” Nvidia is partnering up with OpenAI to offer compute and cash (The Verge) Altman, Huang and the last-minute negotiations that sealed the $100 billion OpenAI-Nvidia deal (CNBC) Secret Service Thwarts Plot to Take Out Cell Service Near UN (Bloomberg) Play Games Sidekick is Gemini Live for Android games (9to5Google) AI Generated "Workslop" Is Destroying Productivity (Harvard Business Review) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. NVIDIA is investing $100 billion in Open AI, and there are at least a billion angles to that fact. So get ready to dive into it. Why were there giant sim farms popping up around New York City? The new AI to help you with Candy Crush, I guess, and new buzzword alert, say hello to work slop. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. India is going to invest $100 billion in OpenAI. It's going to do so progressively as part of a deal to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for OpenAI's infrastructure in the coming years. Quoting the Verge, one of the most important points here besides more data centers and compute, which are always in high demand for companies like OpenAI, is that as part of the deal,

invidia, quote, intends to invest up to $100 billion in Open AI progressively as each gigawatt is deployed per the release. The details will be finalized in the next few weeks, according to the companies. Invideo will now be a preferred strategic compute and networking partner for OpenAI's AI factory growth plans, OpenAI said. News of this strategic partnership comes after the January announcement that Microsoft would no longer be the sole compute provider for OpenAI, and that the tech giant would now just have a right of first refusal in such cases. Since then, OpenAI has branched out, beginning to build its own data centers and a $300 billion cloud computing deal with Oracle. OpenAI and Microsoft also put out a pointed statement earlier this month that they had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding,

adding that they are actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement, end quote. And quoting CNBC. Sam Altman and Jensen Huang negotiated their pact largely through a mix of virtual discussions and one-on-one meetings in London, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., with no bankers involved, according to people close to the talks who declined to be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The arrangement calls for NVIDIA to invest $10 billion at a time in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. As the buildout unfolds, NVIDIA will also supply the cutting-edge processors, powering a host of new data centers. Now, while OpenAI gets more intimate with NVIDIA,

it has to maneuver through a number of high-stakes relationships with other key partners. OpenAI only informed Microsoft its principal shareholder and primary cloud provider a day before the deal was signed. The people familiar with the matter said earlier this year, Microsoft lost its status as OpenAI's exclusive provider of computing capacity. The pact also comes less than two weeks after a disclosure from Oracle indicated that OpenAI agreed to spend $300 billion in computing power with the company over about five years, starting in 2027. At the start of the year, OpenAI joined Stargate, a multi-billion dollar project announced by President Trump, and backed by Oracle and SoftBank to build out next-generation AI infrastructure. Going forward, all of OpenAI's infrastructure projects will fall under the Stargate umbrella. Invita and OpenAI provided scant details about where and when the buildout will take place, other than to say that

the first 10 gigawatt sites will go online in the back half of next year. Executive said they've reviewed between 700 and 800 potential locations since unveiling Stargate in January. In the months that followed, they fielded a flood of proposals from developers across North America offering land, power and facilities. That list has been narrowed as OpenAI weighs energy availability, permitting timelines, and financing terms, the company said. In Monday's announcement, OpenAI described Nvidia as a preferred partner, but executives told CNBC that it's not an exclusive relationship, and the company is continuing to work with large cloud companies and other chipmakers to avoid being locked into a single vendor. The financing structure for the OpenAI deal is designed,

to avoid hefty dilution. The initial $10 billion tranche is locked in at a $500 billion valuation and expected to close within a month or so once the transaction has been finalized, people familiar with the matter said. Nine successive $10 billion rounds are planned, each to be priced at the company's then current valuation as new capacity comes online, they said, end quote. This morning, Sam Altman said OpenAI wants to create, quote, a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week and plans to reveal more details this year. Jensen Wong said the 10-gagawatt OpenAI project is equivalent to 4 to 5 million GPUs. The first phase is expected to come online in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia's Verarubin

platform. And sources say the Nvidia OpenAI deal is really two separate transactions. Invidia invests in OpenAI for non-voting shares. Then OpenAI can use the cash to buy Nvidia's chips. And that is what a lot of people are talking about. Already the whole AI mania has been accused of being a bubble, in part because all of the investment money is pouring into AI, often from the big tech players, who then receive the money back in terms of AI compute spend in a snake-eating its tail sort of way. Well, I will point out, this is a $100 billion investment on Nvidia's part.

I know it's over time, but let me point out, do you know how much money Nvidia has made in net income over the last three years, $107 billion. Are they just turning around and spending all the money they made on one of their biggest customers, or vice versa, or maybe similarly, Open AI is burning a ton of money we know. It needs more money if it's going to keep burning it, and it burns it by spending it on data centers on Nvidia chips. So one way to look at this is, Jensen is giving Sam the money to pay for the chips. Sam needs to buy from him. Another thing to point out, though, this deal, at least at the contours described thus far represents as much compute as NVIDIA shipped this year in total. Would be useful for them to lock in that demand right from potentially their biggest long-term customer.

So is this Oroboros all the way down? Now, there's a metric ton of takes out there on this right now, so let me give you a sampling just to get a sense of the discourse. Connorsen tweeted, I'm not sure if I'd classify this as a bubble, but 10 companies passing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars back and forth is certainly something. And here's Reihard Jark. For both NVIDIA and OpenAI, the $100 billion investment is perfect. For Open AI, the big question was how they were going to raise the future $300 billion, as the valuation is already very high and the cash burn over the next few years is projected to be crazy.

On top of it, there is not that much VC money that size. Invidia, because of their other motivations in this deal, will also not be very demand. ending when it comes to the valuation, I would bet. On Nvidia's part, they want to make sure OpenAI continues to buy a ton of Nvidia GPUs as they don't want the AI train to stop. OpenAI and Anthropic are already now one-third of Nvidia's GPU purchases. The biggest risk for Nvidia was that the capital and venture markets saying stop to all that spending. So to remove the pressure from capital markets and VC money, they decided to just secure their future revenue with their own cash that they don't know what to do with. For Nvidia, it is also best that OpenAI wins in this AI race,

as Google with its TPUs is not a perfect customer and ananthropic because of its Amazon backing is also using and testing out Amazon Traneum chips. The biggest OAI backers, Microsoft, and Oracle, don't have or have very early ineffective custom ASIC projects, so they are not a threat. InVIDIA, with a considerable stake in Open AI can also influence Open AI's future decisions about their own custom silicon, end quote. Here's Tuchin Jin on X. Sam Altman, I need GPUs. Jensen Huang. You know who has GPUs? Sam, but I don't have any money.

Jensen, let's do a strategic partnership. 9am, Nvidia to invest $100 billion in Open AI to deploy 10 gigawatts of data centers. 9.20 a.m., Nvidia's stock rockets by more than $100 billion. Jensen, here's my $100 billion investment, end quote. and Shea Ballore on X. The Bears say Nvidia is just buying $100 billion of its own chips through OpenAI. The reality is that $100 billion is 10 gigawatts of capacity, the power of New York City, locked into Nvidia's stack.

That's Blackwell Today, Ruben Tomorrow, and years of high-margin networking plus software on top, end quote. The U.S. Secret Service says it is dismantled more than 300 SIM card servers in the New York City area that could have disrupted communications ahead of the upcoming U.S. UN General Assembly. Quoting Bloomberg. Agents discovered more than 300 SIM card servers and 100,000 SIM cards at several locations within a 35-mile radius of New York City, according to a statement on Tuesday. The Secret Service didn't identify the officials who were threatened, the nature of the threat, or the nations that may have been involved. They said the Secret Service hasn't publicly called

out any nation in part because of sensitivities around this week's UN General Assembly meeting. The potential for disruption to our country's telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in the statement. He said the investigation, quote, makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down, and dismantled, end quote. Bad actors using SIM card servers and thousands of cards can send anonymous threats and conduct attacks such as disabling cell towers and overwhelming communications networks. Matt McCool, the special agent in charge of the Secret Services New York field office, said the seizure was the largest operation of its

kind the agency had undertaken. Agents were still conducting forensic analysis on the more than 100,000 SIM cards, he said. The timing, the location, the proximity of this network had the potential to impact the UN, and that was clear and something that we had to consider, McCool said. Initial analysis of the C's data has identified ties to at least one foreign nation, as well as links to criminals already known to U.S. law enforcement, including cartel members, according to people familiar with the investigation. It wasn't clear what connection the foreign nation and the criminals had to each other, if any, or what their links were to the devices. It was also unclear if the network was linked to a spate of incidents earlier this year that

saw unknown actors impersonate White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Over the summer, a State Department cable said an unknown person left voice and text messages for at least five people, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress after creating a signal account that pretended to be Rubio's in mid-June. Britain has already taken steps to restrict Sim Farms. In April, the Home Office announced a ban on the possession or supply of Sim Farms without a legitimate reason, citing their role in smishing campaigns that impersonated delivery services or banks, end quote. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs.

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dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn Daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamaba, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Google this morning announced PlayGames Sidekick for Android, an in-game overlay that provides

access to Gemini Live while playing games downloaded from the Play Store. Quoting 9 to 5, Google, Google is bringing Gemini Live to Android Gaming with PlayGames Sidekick, Build as a coach. It's meant to be a helpful in-game overlay available while playing games downloaded from play. In supported games, you'll see a new handle that can be dragged to either side of the screen or dismissed and accessed from notifications. This overlays a panel which supports both landscape and portrait orientation with a link to your profile and playpoints. Next is a grid to take a screenshot, screen recording, stream to YouTube, and enable Do Not Disturb. Then there's a prominent Start Gemini Live button that launches the assistant and start

sharing your screen. Inline controls let you mute the microphone and end. You can ask anything about the game with Gemini fully aware of the context. The idea is to get help without having to leave the game to do a web search for walkthroughs or other tutorials. You get in-game guidance with verbal tips, tricks, and support. The context was perfect when Google demoed sidekick with the Battle of Polytopia for us. Google Play worked with the Google Deep Mind team with the latter, first demoing AI agents for games last December. Gemini can, quote, reason about the game based solely on the action on the screen. Meanwhile, game tips in Sidekick is powered by AI and based on your gameplay. There are also carousels for achievements, which you can browse, streaks, quests, coupons,

play credit, which is redeemable in line and boosts. Google will start letting users try playgame sidekick with Gemini Live in select games over the coming months, end quote. Finally today, more intriguing data around the use of AI. According to new research, those low productivity gains statistics from AI that many companies have been reporting thus far may stem from employees using AI to produce work-slop, or low-effort, passable work that creates more work for others. So new buzzword for you, work-slop, quoting Harvard Business Review. A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools. While workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value. Consider, for instance,

that the number of companies with fully AI-led processes nearly doubled last year, while AI use has likewise doubled at work since 2023. Yet a recent report from the MIT Media Lab found that 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in these technologies. So much activity, so much enthusiasm, so little return. Why? In collaboration with Stanford Social Media Lab, our research team at Better Up Labs has identified one possible reason. Employees are using AI tools to create low effort, passable-looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers. On social media, which is increasingly clogged with low-quality AI-generated posts, this content is often referred to as AI Slop. In the context of work, we refer to this phenomenon as work-slop.

We define Workslop as AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. Here's how this happens. As AI tools become more accessible, workers are increasingly able to quickly produce polished output. Well-formatted slides, long-structured reports, seemingly articulate summaries of academic papers by non-experts and usable code. But while some employees are using this ability to polish good work, others use it to create content that is actually unhelpful, incomplete or missing crucial context about the project at hand. The insidious effect of work slop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver. If you have ever experienced this,

you might recall the feeling of confusion after opening such a document followed by frustration. Wait, what is this exactly before you begin to wonder if the sender simply used AI to generate large blocks of text instead of thinking it through? If this sounds for me, you have been work-slopped. According to our recent ongoing survey, this is a significant problem. Of the 1,150 U.S.-based full-time employees across industries, 40% report having received work-slop in the last month. Employees who have encountered work-slop estimate that an average of 15.4% of the content they receive at work qualifies. The phenomenon occurs mostly between peers, 40%, but work-slop is also sent to managers by direct reports at 18%. 16% of the time work-slop flows down

the latter from managers to their teams or even from higher up than that. Workslop occurs across industries, but we found that professional services and technology are disproportionately impacted, end quote. Hey, quick reminder that this pod has a YouTube channel. Just search TechBrew Ride Home in YouTube and subscribe. The reason you're going to want to do that is because all of the bonus interview episodes going forward will also have video as well. So you're going to want to subscribe to see that. For example, this weekend's upcoming bonus episode, was actually recorded in person in the Morning Brew Studios. And while we're on the topic, reminder that you can subscribe to the ad-free podcast feed at

Tech.com.combe. Talk to you tomorrow. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.