What's up: The AI Cold War; Meg Whitman on the 'AI gold rush;' CoreWeave's revenue doubles; Softbank sells Nvidia stake; politicians link rising electricity prices to data centers.

Good morning. Anthropic expects to break even in 2028, with rival OpenAI projected not to turn a profit until 2030, according to financial documents reviewed by the Journal's Berber Jin.

Questions about whether AI spending will generate enough revenue to cover massive infrastructure costs have intensified in recent weeks, as investors punish cloud giants for heavy capital outlays and business customers press for clarity on their vendors’ path to financial stability.

Now we know a bit more.

The documents, shared with investors this summer, reveal two distinct road maps with Anthropic taking a more cautious path, focused on growing sales among corporate customers, who account for about 80% of its revenue.

OpenAI, by contrast, plans far heavier spending on chips, data centers, and talent as it pursues broader consumer and enterprise markets — and expands into other costly ventures such as video and image generation.

The ChatGPT-maker expects to burn through roughly 14 times as much cash as Anthropic before turning a profit in 2030.

“Every dollar we invest in AI infrastructure goes to serving the hundreds of millions of consumers, businesses and developers who rely on ChatGPT to get more done,” an OpenAI spokesperson tells the Journal.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

More--much more-- on the companies, individuals and nation-states driving AI infrastructure spending below. 

CoreWeave reports doubling of revenue from AI boom

Cloud provider CoreWeave, the patron saint of borrowing massive sums to pay for AI infrastructure, saw revenue more than double to $1.36 billion in the third quarter, WSJ reports. The results reflect an “unprecedented demand for AI,” the company said Monday.

Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s co-founder and chief executive, last week played down fears of a data-center bubble, while he played up the power of debt.

I mean, that's the nature of the business, right? Like we are building infrastructure, delivering infrastructure. The way that we built our business and we're able to scale our business to such enormous scale so quickly is that we used debt, because debt is the correct way to do this.

Speaking of debt. JPMorgan Chase in a Monday report said that the AI boom is so capital-intensive that it will reshape global finance with every major source of money, from bonds to private credit, addressing the gap, Bloomberg reports. The bank estimates that the tab could be between $5 trillion and $7 trillion.

But is it all just too, too much? As a CEO of HP and eBay during the 1990s and 2000s, Meg Whitman has seen her share of booms and busts. On stage last night at WSJ Leadership Institute's Board of Directors Council Summit in Palm Beach, Fla., Whitman, who currently sits on CoreWeave's board, offered her take on the AI boom.

From where I sit in this industry now, the demand is insatiable, like the demand for compute, the demand for energy, the demand for engineers is unlike anything I've seen since 1998... And you can go back to the mainframe, to the PC, to the internet, to e-commerce, to the iPhone, to the cloud. These are all ginormous changes. This is the biggest I've ever seen, and it is the fastest moving I've ever seen... I think if I was running one of these big energy companies or or infrastructure companies, I'd be doing exactly what they're doing.

🎥 Meg Whitman Calls AI the Biggest 'Gold Rush' of Her 40-year Career Do today’s tech leaders truly understand the power—and responsibility—they wield? 

Not everyone is entirely happy. More below.

The political left is dialing up scrutiny of data centers

A group of Democratic senators may have hit upon the motherload of political causes, one that pits everyday homeowners fearing rising electricity costs against billionaire landlords and their sprawling, Central Park-sized developments.

In a letter to the White House and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) and others took aim at Meta, OpenAI, Alphabet, Oracle and other firms behind a data-center build-out, WSJ reports. President Trump’s push to fast-track these projects is forcing Americans into “bidding wars with trillion-dollar companies to keep the lights on at home,” they wrote.

“The point is not to stop the data centers but make sure the costs are borne by the gigantic companies that create them, and that electricity prices are checked or even reduced,” Blumenthal said in an interview. “What we need is some federal safeguards and oversight.”

The AI Cold War between China and the U.S.

But when the Beltway-Silicon Valley complex believes that it is locked in an existential struggle with China over AI dominance, attention to “safety and oversight” can drop. 

Or as Vice President JD Vance said in a February speech in Paris, “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.”

The WSJ's Josh Chin and Raffaele Huang chart the race towards AI superintelligence between the U.S. and China. At stake: “Unshakable scientific, economic and military superiority.”

America holds a sizable lead.

China can’t match it in advanced chips. Industry participants believe China may be as much as a decade away from making microchips that match America’s best products, mainly due to U.S. restrictions. Nor does China have an answer for the financial firepower of private American investors, who funded AI startups to the tune of $104 billion in the first half of 2025.

But China is working to tip the scales.

Chinese AI models currently rank at or near the top in every task from coding to video generation, with the exception of search, according to Chatbot Arena, a popular crowdsourced ranking platform. China’s manufacturing sector, meanwhile, is rocketing past the U.S. in bringing AI into the physical world through robotaxis, autonomous drones and humanoid robots.

More than one way to lose. Experts tell the Journal they fear that Washington and Beijing will become so focused on winning, that they will find it hard to cooperate in areas like preventing extremist groups from using AI in destructive ways.

SoftBank Group said it sold its stake in Nvidia for $5.83 billion as it reported its quarterly net profit more than doubled to $16.23 billion thanks to billions of dollars of gains from its OpenAI investment, WSJ reports. SoftBank has been leading an investment of up to $40 billion in the ChatGPT maker, with plans to syndicate out $10 billion to co-investors. 

Microsoft is working with online influencers to generate buzz around its Copilot chatbot, which currently runs a distant third behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini in the consumer market, Bloomberg reports.

Reuters reports that Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan will take over the chipmaker's AI efforts as its chief technology officer, Sachin Katti, announced on social media that he was heading to OpenAI.

Recent exits from Tesla include leaders in its Model Y and cybertruck programs as the company–with shareholder support–leans more into robots, Electrek reports.

Majestic Labs, a new startup formed by former Meta and Google executives to improve AI server architecture, said they have raised $100 million, CNBC reports.

Sony Music Publishing named Michael Young as chief information officer. Young, who previously was chief product and technology officer at Chatham Financial, will be based in Nashville, Tenn., Music Business Worldwide reports.

The Republican-led Senate late Monday passed a spending package to end the record-long government shutdown, with Democrats providing enough votes to move the measure across the finish line. (WSJ)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) wasn’t one of the eight Democratic senators who voted with Republicans to back GOP legislation to end the government shutdown. He is still taking most of the blame. (WSJ)

A settlement between Visa, Mastercard and U.S. merchants announced this week could usher in a new era of tiered pricing at the register, giving businesses more power to charge fees depending on the credit card used. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.