Highlights of the week: US gets TikTok, Intel seeks partners, Nvidia and OpenAI alliance

Nvidia announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI and plans to invest up to $100 billion to create an "AI factory." Intel is in talks with Apple and TSMC to invest in its production. Oracle has placed $18 billion in bonds to cover the costs associated with the AI boom. US President Donald Trump imposed duties of 100% on drugs and approved a deal to sell TikTok to a pool of investors. About the main events from September 22 to 26 - in our review.

Nvidia, the largest manufacturer of processors for artificial intelligence, has announced a strategic partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI - the chipmaker plans to invest up to $100 billion in the company. As part of the deal, the parties will create at least 10 gigawatts of computing capacity. According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, that's the equivalent of 4-5 million GPUs, which is comparable to Nvidia's shipments for all of 2025 and "double the level of last year." The first data centers will launch in the second half of 2026.

OpenAI has selected Nvidia as a key partner to develop its AI Factory, with the companies synchronizing their plans: OpenAI will focus on models and software infrastructure, while Nvidia will focus on hardware and software. The collaboration expands the Stargate initiative, which includes Microsoft, Oracle and SoftBank.

Before the announcement of the deal with OpenAI quotes Nvidia declined, but after the publication immediately went to growth - at the end of trading on September 22, the value of shares chipmaker added 4%, and the market capitalization reached $4.5 trillion.

What else is there to read about it?

- Why this deal is a bad sign for Nvidia - in the article of Oninvest correspondent Venera Sayfutdinova "Investor of last hope": analysts saw bubble risks in the deal between Nvidia and OpenAI.

- Oninvest columnist Roman Kutuzov discussed the fact that it will be difficult to take into account the interests of all partners in the Stargate project itself in his column "Club of sworn friends: what is the Stargate AI megaproject".

Starting October 1, Donald Trump's administration will impose a 100 percent duty on all branded and patented drugs imported into the U.S., CNBC wrote. The fees will not apply to pharmaceutical companies that have already started building production facilities in the country. According to the US president, such measures should bring production back to the country, but the industry warns that it will cause price increases and supply disruptions.

Pharmaceutical giants including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer have already expressed concern: the fees could reduce investment in innovation and exacerbate drug shortages. J&J expects the fees to cost it $400 million in 2025. Experts note that due to the complexity of global supply chains, rapid "relocation" of production to the US is unlikely and will lead to market destabilization.

On September 25, the U.S. president also signed an executive order approving the sale of the U.S. portion of TikTok's U.S. business.

According to the terms, the business of the Chinese network in the United States will be managed by a joint venture. In it, the owner of TikTok - ByteDance - will receive less than 20% of shares, and the main shareholders will be Oracle, Silver Lake and investment fund from Abu Dhabi MGX. They will get about 45%. ByteDance investors and new stake holders will get another 35%. Oracle will also continue to provide cloud computing capacity for the app's U.S. division, CNBC reported.

TikTok's entire U.S. business was valued at $14 billion for the deal.

These terms still need to be approved by China, ByteDance representatives were not present at the White House when the deal was signed.

This week, it was revealed that Intel approached Apple and TSMC about investing in its business.

The iPhone maker was approached by Bloomberg's sources on September 24. Negotiations are at an early stage, the chipmaker is discussing possible partnerships with other companies, Bloomberg wrote. After the publication of this news, Intel shares during the trading session on Wednesday, September 24, rose in the moment by 8%. At the end of trading quotes added 6.4%, the next day the growth continued. Apple shares, on the contrary, decreased - by 0.83%.

The potential rapprochement with Apple is symbolic for Intel, which lost this customer five years ago when the iPhone maker switched to its own M processors. Now Intel is trying to regain its position with the support of the U.S. government, which owns 10% of its shares. Since the beginning of August, the company's securities have grown by more than 50% on the back of investments by SoftBank ($2 billion) and Nvidia ($5 billion).

However, at that time experts noted that the key problem Intel - the technological lag from TSMC. But already on Friday, September 26, it became known that Intel offered the largest contract chip maker TSMC to invest in it or agree on a partnership, reported The Wall Street Journal with reference to sources.

Intel's attempts to raise outside funding have intensified since the U.S. government became a shareholder, the WSJ adds.

What else is there to read about it?

- How the potential deal between Apple and Intel was treated on Wall Street - in the article "Breakthrough or goodwill gesture? What Wall Street is saying about a possible deal between Intel and Apple".

- After receiving a stake in Intel, Donald Trump's administration is considering taking stakes in major defense contractors. Oninvest correspondents wrote about which businesses could benefit from cooperation with the state in the article "Intel Case: Which small-caps can benefit from state participation in US companies".

Tether Holdings, the issuer of the world's largest USDT stablecoin, is in talks to raise up to $20 billion in investment at a company valuation of $500 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing sources. If successful, the deal will make Tether one of the most expensive private companies in the world and put its shareholders among the richest people on the planet.

As a result of the deal, the fortune of Tether Chairman Giancarlo Devasini will exceed $220 billion, which will raise him to fifth place in Bloomberg's billionaires index, the agency calculated. In addition, the fortune of Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and his predecessor Jean-Louis van der Velde will amount to about $95 billion each, which raises them to the top 20 richest people in the world.

On September 24, Oracle placed investment bonds for $18 billion - the second largest deal on the market this year, wrote Bloomberg. Demand from investors reached nearly $88 billion, the agency's source said. The capital raise is tied to the company's increased spending to meet demand driven by the AI boom. The debt offering coincided with Oracle's large cloud infrastructure contracts with customers such as OpenAI and Meta Platforms, which is also driving up the company's spending, Bloomberg noted.

Oracle, whose market value has nearly doubled since the start of the year, issued the debt in six tranches, including a rare 40-year bond, sources told Bloomberg. The securities will yield 1.37 percentage points above Treasuries of similar maturity versus the originally announced 1.65 pct.

At the end of August Oracle had about $95 billion of outstanding long-term debt, the agency writes with reference to the company's data. According to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Schiffman and Alex Reed, following Wednesday's deal, Oracle's debt-to-profit ratio may increase, but the company is likely to maintain a high credit rating.

What to read about it?

- Rothschild & Co Redburn analyst Alex Heissl started tracking Oracle shares on Sept. 25 and immediately gave them a Sell rating and a target price of $175 - about 40% below their current value. Read more in the article "Analyst Advises Selling Oracle Shares Against Its AI Deals. The stock collapsed by 6%".

September 24, quotations of Chinese Alibaba at the auction in New York and Hong Kong jumped to the maximum for four years after the company at the conference Apsara announced an increase in investment in artificial intelligence, cooperation with Nvidia and the expansion of the network of data centers around the world. At the end of trading on Wednesday, depositary receipts in New York soared 8.2 percent, while in Hong Kong, Alibaba shares added 9.2 percent.

"Cumulative investment in AI will exceed $4 trillion over the next five years - the largest investment in computing power and R&D in history," said Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu. He emphasized Alibaba Cloud's strategy as a "full-service AI provider."

At the conference, Alibaba unveiled the Qwen3-Max language model with a trillion parameters, which outperformed competitors in independent tests, as well as the Qwen3-Omni multimodal system for VR/AR solutions. Alibaba also announced new data centers in Brazil, France and the Netherlands.

Bank of America raised its price target on the stock to $195, reiterating a "buy" recommendation and noting that Alibaba has solidified its position as the world's leading full-service AI provider. According to MarketWatch, most analysts advise buying Alibaba securities, with Buy and Overweight ratings assigned to them by 48 analysts out of 53 total.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor