Published on LinkedIn, Substack and AmitabhApte.com on Sept 28, 2025
In spotlight this week: The $100 Billion Question
Nvidia is planning to pour $100 billion into OpenAI to build next-generation data centres, in what could become the most ambitious AI infrastructure bet ever. On paper, it’s a marriage of two giants: Nvidia supplies the silicon, OpenAI drives demand. The ambition signals nothing less than the industrialisation of AI.
But there’s a tension here. Much of this capital will circle back to Nvidia’s own chips, fuelling whispers of “closed-loop” deals that echo dot-com era excess. Analysts are already asking: are we funding productivity revolutions, or inflating another bubble?
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If this bet delivers, we could see an acceleration of AI capability at a planetary scale. If it falters, the correction could be sharp, reshaping both capital markets and public trust.
Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon added a sobering perspective: headcount will stay flat even as business grows, because AI will take on roles that once required people. Coming from the world’s largest private employer, this isn’t abstract, it’s the front edge of a workforce reset that will ripple far beyond retail.
My take: We’ve entered the era where compute has become capital. AI is no longer just software; its steel, energy, land, and labour economics. Leaders must prepare for the dual challenge: harnessing unprecedented opportunity while cushioning society from unprecedented disruption.
Noteworthy this week: what caught my eye in the AI and tech world
I track the week’s big currents across leadership, geopolitics, policy, infrastructure, and people. Three themes stood out this week:
1. Cybersecurity: breaches are now brand events
- Harrods confirmed a breach via a third-party vendor; customer names and contact details compromised. Another reminder that supply-chain risk is now brand risk.
- JLR is recovering from a major September cyberattack that halted production and shipments. Global supply chains remain brittle, and resilience is now as important as efficiency.
2. Infrastructure – capital meets fragility
- Beyond Nvidia’s $100bn, OpenAI also struck a $400bn partnership with Oracle and SoftBank, and tied up with Databricks to deepen enterprise adoption. Lofty projections of $125bn revenue by 2029 and “trillions” in future data-centre spend highlight both ambition and fragility.
- Anthropic is tripling its workforce and expanding globally, with 80% of usage now outside the US. From pharma to finance to governments, we’re moving from AI pilots to enterprise-scale deployments. The AI arms race is now unmistakably global.
3. Policy & People – platforms redraw the line
- Spotify removed 75 million low-quality AI-generated tracks. Platforms are drawing new lines between innovation and integrity. Protecting human creativity is now a business necessity.
- Neon, an app that pays users to record calls for AI training, has triggered major privacy alarms. The trade-off between data, consent, and profit is becoming the next trust battleground.
- Global talent shifts: Indian Global Capability Centres are no longer just back-offices; they’re producing CXOs for Tesco, Walmart, SAP, and Maersk. By 2030, an estimated 30,000 global leaders will emerge from this pipeline, a structural rebalancing of corporate power.
Beyond Tech & AI: my “mind share” this week
This week I tuned into Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast with Dr Pradip Jamnadas, a cardiologist known as “the fasting doctor.” is insights were striking: modern diets overload us with insulin spikes, while simple practices like intermittent fasting and better sleep can transform long-term health.
It’s a timely reminder that while AI scales our external capability, it’s disciplined self-care that sustains our inner resilience.
In summary: my key takeaway this weekend
“Capital is racing into compute. Leadership must race just as hard to scale responsibility“
Amitabh Apte 