Published on LinkedIn and amitabhapte.com on 9th Nov, 2025
This week in AI – When Ambition meets Arithmetic
The AI boom is now running on infrastructure, not imagination.
OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar spent much of the week clarifying that the company isn’t asking for a government backstop on its $1.4 trillion infrastructure plan, a figure so vast it rivals national energy budgets. Her comments drew a sharp response from Trump’s new AI czar, David Sacks, who declared there would be “no federal bailout for AI.” The exchange revealed the growing tension between private ambition and public patience. The industrialisation of intelligence is proving as capital-intensive as any past revolution, and just as politically fraught.
Yet the capital keeps flowing. OpenAI signed a $38 billion cloud-computing deal with Amazon, making AWS its primary engine for model training and deployment. For Amazon, it’s a strategic coup; for OpenAI, a hedge against the global shortage of compute and chips. The partnership underscores how the AI stack is consolidating, fewer players, bigger bets, tighter dependencies.
Apple talking with Google to power a new Siri using Gemini AI marks a pragmatic turn for the company once obsessed with control. Even Apple is realising that no single firm can build the full AI stack alone. The new race isn’t to own the model; it’s to own the infrastructure, the energy, and the ecosystem.
Tesla shareholders approved a record-breaking $1 trillion pay package, a figure that defies logic until you see the scale of his ambition: turning Tesla from an automaker into an AI-and-robotics platform that spans cars, humanoids, and autonomous fleets. His reward is tied not to quarterly profits, but to an $8.5 trillion valuation. The math may be extraordinary, but it captures the mood of the moment, an economy running on belief as much as balance sheets.
My takeaway this weekend
The age of AI infrastructure is here and it’s expensive.
Across these stories runs the same current: the strain is showing. Building intelligence at planetary scale demands not just algorithms and GPUs, but grids, land, and trillions in capital. The numbers are breath-taking, but so are the risks. The question is no longer can we build it, but how much can the world afford to spend chasing it. Musk’s trillion-dollar vision shows what’s possible when belief meets capital. Friar’s clarification reminds us what happens when optimism meets arithmetic. The future of AI won’t be limited by imagination. It will be priced by reality.
Beyond AI: my mindshare – Human Code Behind Technology Buying
Earlier this week, I joined fellow technology leaders Tom Clark (Everywhen), Rebecca Reynolds Jones (Institute of Directors), and Charlotte Walters (HSBC) on a panel at Computing’s Future of B2B Tech Marketing event, moderated by Computing editor Tom Allen.
Our discussion explored how technology buyers and marketers are navigating an era of automation, AI, and hyper-personalisation and what trust really looks like when so much outreach is now machine-generated.
My core message was simple: credibility begins with relevance.
The best outreach doesn’t just know your name; it understands your business, your pressures, and your purpose. The quickest way to lose a CIO’s trust? Treat technology like a product rather than a partnership.
As AI personalisation scales, human authenticity becomes the real differentiator.
Integrity, empathy, and business fluency still open more doors than algorithms ever will.
“The future of technology marketing won’t belong to those who automate the fastest, but to those who empathise the deepest.”
Amitabh Apte 