They sign the purchase order on 1/1/26. AMD issues invoice to be paid in 30 days, that is 2/1/26. OpenAI triggers warrant and informs AMD on 1/2/26. OpenAI receives shares on 1/4/26. On 1/5/26 OpenAI and AMD announce the GPU purchase deal. On 1/30/26 OpenAI sells its shares in AMD. From proceeds, OpenAI pays AMD on 2/1/26. Thus, AMD financed OpenAI's GPU purchase via AMD's shares.
translated, AMD buys GPU from itself and gives them to OpenAI for free. OpenAI gets GPUs for free, AMD hopes the market will reward the deal enough to increase its valuation by more than the dilution cost.
I have to ask - is this even legal? I understand it can be, but somehow it feels wrong. I guess AMD would report revenue of those GPU sale and equity issuance / dilution as part of payment terms, and OpenAI would record hardware purchase expense as well as investment income or maybe capital gain when selling those shares. What makes it legal is probably it all needs to be transparently communicated in time?
Yes, I was being somewhat flippant in my description of the transaction. But the net result of the transaction is the same. OpenAI can finance the GPU purchases by borrowing against the contractual guarantees it received from AMD to receive warrants in exchange for acquiring AMD GPUs. Whether the transaction is partially or entirely financed will depend on AMD's share price movement in the interim.
There's no giving away of anything in the deal. The $0.01 per share price is only available if they purchase the GPUs.
It's more like one of those "free with purchase" deals where you're still paying for the product, but they throw in something to sweeten the deal.
They're not actually getting AMD shares at $0.01 each with no strings attached like many of the comments are assuming.