OpenAI needs to find $207 billion in new funding by 2030 to pay for its ambitious AI data center expansion plans, HSBC analysts have said.

A report from the bank’s US software and services team, reported by the FT and others, has revised projections for the ChatGPT maker’s revenue up by four percent, but warns it is still looking at an eye-watering financial black hole.

Recent months have seen OpenAI commit to several massive deals worth a total of $1.4 trillion.

These include agreements for the hardware, such as GPUs, required to support its network of Stargate data centers, which are being planned for the US and other parts of the world.

In September, it signed a non-binding letter-of-intent to buy 10GW of Nvidia products in its data centers, with the GPU giant also pledging to invest $100 billion in OpenAI

At the same time OpenAI, which has a cloud contract worth $250 billion to buy services from Microsoft, has reportedly agreed to spend $300 billion with Oracle by 2030, and will shell out $38bn with AWS over a seven-year period.

Fulfilling all these contracts is likely to be a tall order, and HSBC’s report said OpenAI “would need $207bn of new financing by 2030." It came up with the figure by using a model that projects future OpenAI revenue against its costs.

Referring to the required funding, the report said: "One unknown parameter is the flexibility that OpenAI may have to adjust its commitment vs effective demand or financial capacity. Capital injections, debt issuance, or higher revenue than in our model would help closing the funding gap."

It’s not all bad news for Sam Altman’s company. Analysts from HSBC expect ChatGPT products to have three billion regular users by 2030. The service currently has around 800 million users. It is also expecting subscription rates to rise and that corporate demand for OpenAI’s products, via APIs and licensing, will climb. Large language model subscriptions are likely to become “as ubiquitous and useful as Microsoft 365," according to HSBC.

Any problems OpenAI experiences raising the money is likely to have a cascading impact on other major tech companies.

"The most exposed partners to OpenAI success or failure under our coverage are Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and AMD, and so is SoftBank, given its 11 percent stake in OpenAI," the report said.