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Tory Stephens

@torystephens.bsky.social

3.4K followers 740 following 560 posts

Climate Storytelling | Husband, Dad, Hopeful Wu-Tang Clan Member 🤞🏾 | Publishing and curating climate fiction stories @grist.org Former @HealthPolicyHub / Community Catalyst

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Tory Stephens @torystephens.bsky.social · 23d

🔥 The 2025 @grist.org 50 list just dropped! 50 bold leaders proving climate solutions & justice are alive and thriving. From art to science to local action — meet the changemakers shaping our future. 🌍✨

grist.org/fix/grist-50...

#Climate #Policy #Media #Arts #Food #Business #Culture #Energy

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Grist @grist.org · 10h

As Trump champions fossil fuels, the world is betting on renewable energy.

Despite a U.S. retreat, solar and wind are overtaking fossil fuels globally, according to two new reports.

grist.org/internationa...

#GreenSky #Energy #Climate #Solar #Wind #Renewables

As Trump champions fossil fuels, the world is betting on renewable energy

Despite a U.S. retreat, solar and wind are overtaking fossil fuels globally, according to two reports published this week.

grist.org

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Grist @grist.org · 6h

This climate fiction story could be a Pixar movie. It's really good.

The Cloud Weaver’s Song

In a city high above the desert, a dew harvester and her friend sacrifice everything to prove the end of the Great Drying is at hand.

grist.org/climate-fict...

#Fiction #Solarpunk #Library #Climate

The Cloud Weaver’s Song

From the Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest: In a city high above the desert, a dew harvester and her friend sacrifice everything to prove the end of the Great Drying is at hand.

grist.org

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 6h

Some exciting news: 404 Media just won a grant via Muckrock to investigate book bans and educational censorship in the U.S. The plan is to file hundreds of public records requests around the country and to report on and archive all the documents for public use:

www.404media.co/help-us-inve...

Help Us Investigate Book Bans and Educational Censorship Around America

404 Media has gotten a grant to unearth public records about systematic censorship of books, schools, and libraries in the U.S.

www.404media.co

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Sarah Szalavitz💡 @dearsarah.bsky.social · 14h

👏The last major coal-fired power plant serving CA is closing next month

The US got nearly 1/2 its electricity from coal as recently as 2007.

By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 16.2%—& in 2024, CA got just 2.2% of its electricity from coal! #ProudCalifornian www.latimes.com/california/n...

California says goodbye to coal and hello to cleaner electricity

Your morning catch-up: California says goodbye to coal, trash fees will surge for L.A. residents and more big stories.

www.latimes.com

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Sarah Szalavitz💡 @dearsarah.bsky.social · 11h

Rutgers Professor @mark-bray.bsky.social, who studies & writes about Antifascism,Tries to Flee to Spain After Death Threats

By the time he & his family reached the gate, their tickets were cancelled.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/n... flagrantly & appallingly lawless. Hope he & his family are ok.

Rutgers Expert on Antifa Tries to Flee to Spain After Death Threats

www.nytimes.com

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

NVIDIA and OpenAI are the ultimate form of the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy. None of this is about GPUs, or AI, or innovation - it's about growing two companies as much as possible with little regard for reality or good sense. It's a disgrace.
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

NVIDIA And OpenAI Are The Ultimate Form of the Growth-At-All-Costs Rot Economy
When I wrote the original Rot Economy thesis back in February 2023, I didn’t realize that I was describing OpenAI:

At the center of everything I’ve written for the last few months (if not the last few years), sits a cancerous problem with the fabric of how capital is deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along with the markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the concept of what “good” business truly is, focusing on one metric — one truly noxious metric — over all else: growth.
Both NVIDIA and OpenAI did, at some point, innovate, and NVIDIA kind of still does, but none of that innovation is what’s driving its current stock price. No, what matters to investors right now is NVIDIA’s ability to burp out hype-slop about multi-billion dollar deals, and the sheer contempt that this company has for the media and the markets is, honestly, well-earned — the markets don’t give a shit about what NVIDIA builds, just that they sell more and more of it forever.

At some point, OpenAI created GPT-2, 3, and 4, models that, however you may feel, were real things that existed that did things that were new, and people wanted to invest in them, I assume, to see what else they could build.

It’s clear, at this point, that OpenAI isn’t interested in building anything other than hype.

OpenAI has said or leaked that it plans to launch some sort of consumer device (and maybe even glasses or a voice recorder or a pin), or that it’ll sell AI infrastructure, or launch a social network, or build some sort of robot, or an AI-powered hiring platform, or its own AI chips, or a rival to Microsoft Office.

Sam Altman has said that OpenAI wants to build an “AI factory” that will “build 1 gigawatt of compute capacity a week,” amongst several other very stupid things:

If AI stays on the trajectory that we think it will, then amazing things will be possible. Maybe with 10 gigawatts of …

Right now, all that matters to Sam Altman is closing the $10.3 billion employee share sale so that everybody can cash out on a company that is demanding more money and power than any country or fund can ever provide.

And right now, all that matters to NVIDIA and Jensen Huang is selling more and more GPUs, even if NVIDIA has to eventually become its own customer.

I am certain this will come to a violent, horrifying end, one that will hurt retail investors and bring a prolonged depression to a tech industry that’s run out of hypergrowth ideas.

At the very least, I want to make sure you know why this all happened, who misled you, why they misled you, and how we might stop this from happening again when it’s over.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

OpenAI needs at least $500 billion in cash to fund its operations in the next 4 years, and $432.5 billion *on the low end* to meet their other obligations - more than the combined available capital of the top 10 PE firms ($477bn) and US venture capital ($164bn).
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

OpenAI Will Need To Raise At Least $500 Billion Just To Fund Its Operations, And Another $432.5 Billion Or More To Fulfill Its Obligations - Which Is More Than The Available Capital Of The Top 10 Private Equity Firms and US Venture Capital Combined
So, I am repeating myself a little, but I really, really do not trust OpenAI’s revenue projections, and think they are at best unrealistic or, at worst, a deliberate attempt to mislead investors using the media.

Nevertheless, even if OpenAI is in a position where it is making $200 billion by the year 2030, it will need to have raised at least $500 Billion to get there, and when you add its obligations — including those given to NVIDIA — it will have to raise (or have partners raise) another $400 or so billion.

This is more than the projected available supply of US venture capital at the end of 2025 ($164 billion), and the combined available capital of the top 10 private equity funds ($477 billion), as well as the $50 billion of available direct lending capital from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs (about $35 billion across two closes).

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

In fact, reporting and projections suggest that OpenAI has committed to over $450 billion in compute alone in the next five years. Their other costs are likely to be in the tens of billions, with $30bn in salaries over the next few years.
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

Compute Costs - At least $456.9 Billion Over Five Years
Let’s run through this one more time:

OpenAI has committed to spending $300 billion on compute through 2030 with Oracle.
OpenAI has said it plans to spend an additional $100 billion on backup compute over the next four years.
It’s unclear whether this figure includes the commitments stated previously, or are something distinct. Based on the wording of the coverage I’ve read, I’m inclined to think it’s a separate commitment — which is not good!
OpenAI has agreed to buy $11.9 billion, $4 billion and $6.5bn in compute from CoreWeave over the next five years.
Per The Information, OpenAI expects to spend at least $13 billion in 2027 and $28 billion in 2028 on compute with Microsoft.
This also matches up with The Information’s reporting — though I actually think it’s going to be higher, as OpenAI fudges its numbers and “rounds” them (see the diagram).

OpenAI’s Other Costs Are Deeply Questionable - I Estimate It Will Spend At Least $30 Billion On Salaries Alone In The Next 4 Years, And Other Costs (Storage, Data, Etc) Are Likely To Be In The Billions
So, OpenAI’s supposed $115 billion burn, leaked to The Information on September 6 2025, does not really make much sense.

Assuming we trust these numbers, we’re meant to believe that OpenAI will only lose $17 billion in 2026, on (supposed) revenues of $30 billion, meaning it’s burning $47 billion in 2026.

Assuming, again, that we trust the leaked numbers, OpenAI will spend $40 billion on compute in 2026, leaving it with $7 billion of leftover burn rate.

Now, The Information’s “cash burn” projections are extremely kind, based on their own reporting around OpenAI’s 2024 costs:

The Information reports that some of these costs are the upfront cost of training that has been amortized over a few years, but if that’s the case, why are there other training costs too? Does OpenAI own its own hardware? What does that billion dollars represent? Who knows! What’s a billion between friends?

In any case, I also think The Information is lowballing the cost of employees that make a median of $1.37 million a year, though stock-based compensation may play into that too. But even if we assume they make $500,000 a year in cash on average, I refuse to believe that the 3,500 or so people that worked there in 2024 only cost the company $700 million. If we multiply those two figures, we’re left with nearly $1.75 billion. Some estimates say over 6,000 people work at OpenAI, and with that same math, you’d be looking at $3 billion, and that’s before you add overheads like benefits and taxes.

Assuming that OpenAI grows its headcount by 25% a year, that means it’ll be at 7,500 people in 2026, 9,375 by 2027, 11,718 by 2028, 14,648 by 2029, and 18,310 by 2030, meaning that assuming its average compensation remains the same (which is unlikely, given the ongoing demand for AI talent), it’ll pay $3.75 billion in 2026, $4.688 billion in 2027, $5.859 billion in 2028, $7.324 billion in 2029, and $9.155 billion in 2030.

And this is for a very conservative estimate of the cost of its staff, and one that doesn’t include stock based compensation, or any of those other ancillary costs that I mentioned earlier (like benefits and payroll taxes)..

Other costs like data, hosting, sales, and marketing are hard to gauge, but they are, without a doubt, going to increase. Nevertheless, they amounted to $1.8 billion in costs in 2024, and if we assume that they increase by, say, 20% each year (another conservative estimate,) this would mean that they’d be $2.16 billion in 2025, $2.592 billion in 2026, $3.11 billion in 2027, $3.7 billion in 2028, $4.47 billion in 2029, and $5.3 billion in 2030. These are, I want to be clear, very likely very low.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

When you go and count up all their other deals, OpenAI has also committed nearly $400 billion to Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle alone - despite the fact that neither Oracle nor CoreWeave actually have the capacity to provide, and it'll take 2 years+ to build.
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

The Oracle Deal - $300 Billion In AI Compute Over Four Years
I’m gonna be honest — it’s kind of hard to keep track of how much OpenAI has promised Oracle! On September 10, it reported that it had signed up for $300 billion in compute over four years, but on September 19th The Information reported that OpenAI had planned to spend “about $450 billion renting servers through 2030,” and it’s not clear if that’s with Oracle or other partners too.

But let’s keep it simple: despite the fact that OpenAI can’t afford it and Oracle can’t build the capacity in time, OpenAI has promised to spend $300 billion with Oracle on AI compute over the next four years.

Microsoft - At Least $41 Billion By The End Of 2028
Buried in a The Information article from earlier in the year was this juicy quote:

OpenAI’s planned shift from Microsoft to Stargate wouldn’t happen overnight. The company’s spending on Microsoft-owned data centers should ramp up significantly in the next few years, more than doubling from $13 billion this year to $28 billion in 2028. The spending forecast is based on contracts signed between the two companies, OpenAI indicated. OpenAI could end up spending more with Microsoft for data centers than it indicated in the forecasts if Microsoft chooses to build additional data center capacity through 2030.
I’m gonna go ahead and assume that OpenAI spends at least $13 billion in 2027, and with $28 billion promised in 2028 (Microsoft would not do shit without a promise), that’s $41 billion.

CoreWeave - $22.4 Billion Over 5 Years
OpenAI signed three deals with CoreWeave this year, one for $11.9 billion, another extending it by $4 billion, and another on Thursday, September 25, where it committed to spending a further $6.5bn.

I also do not think CoreWeave has the capacity to fulfill these agreements, but whatever, we're talking about OpenAI right now.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

OpenAI has committed to over $750 billion in chips, data centers and compute over the next 5 years - at least $325bn with NVIDIA alone, with $90 billion of funding restricted until they're built. NVIDIA is also leasing them GPUs, echoing both Enron and Nortel.
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

The NVIDIA Deal — $325 Billion Across 10GW of Data Centers and 3.33 million GPUs, and Potentially As Much As $500 Billion to $600 Billion
As discussed before the premium break, the OpenAI and NVIDIA’s deal requires OpenAI to build 10 Gigawatts of data center capacity to unlock the remaining $90 billion in funding, though I imagine it’ll actually be two gigawatts, though, again, the deal is not finalized.

Per my previous maths, a gigawatt of data center capacity is around $35 billion, made up of $12.5 billion of infrastructure costs and $20 billion of GPUs, assuming we’re talking GB200s. While the price could fluctuate with the launch of NVIDIA’s Rubin GPUs, I think this maths is fairly solid, and, in fact, might actually be a little too kind on OpenAI.

Nevertheless, one nakedly-incorrect statement made by too many people is that OpenAI will use the “$10 billion to build data centers.” Buddy, $10 billion is barely going to build you the buildings and cooling so that you can actually install the GPUs! These things are expensive, require bespoke cooling and server architecture, and take a great deal of specialist labor, costs you can’t really reduce very easily.

And also there’s all of those fucking GPUs.

The Information reported a few days ago that NVIDIA is considering leasing GPUs to OpenAI, and also added that “NVIDIA equipment would account for $350 billion to $450 billion of the total cost of the proposed project” comprising “chips and networking equipment.”

The Information’s sources say that the total cost of “the project” “could range between $500 billion and $600 billion,” and if I’m honest, I think their source is pulling these numbers out of their ass (to be clear, if I got given these numbers I’d publish them too!), because that would suggest an effective cost of $50 billion a gigawatt. What could change this would be the cost of Rubin GPUs, I guess? Maybe there’s an entire other kind of server architecture that’s way more expensive? If that’s the case, that blows up most of my maths and not in a way that helps OpenAI.

Nevertheless, this “leasing” situation is extremely worrying. Per The Information:

The leasing deal could be structured to minimize risks for Nvidia. Nvidia could set up an entity that borrows money to buy the servers, using the chips as collateral. OpenAI’s lease payments could go towards paying back the loan.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, this is worryingly reminiscent of what Enron — yes, that Enron — did in the 90s to hide its debts and boost its revenues. It created a special purpose vehicle (basically, a separate company) called Whitewing which bought toxic assets from Enron’s sheets using loans where Enron stock was the collateral. As a result, Enron could reduce its stated liabilities and boost its revenues, even though it was really just selling dogshit it already owned to itself.

While Enron was a far more complex and dangerous situation, what’s being described here is effectively NVIDIA creating a company to buy GPUs from NVIDIA to then lease GPUs to OpenAI, at which point I imagine the entity would send money to NVIDIA. I imagine NVIDIA would book these GPUs as “sold,” which would bump NVIDIA’s revenue, despite the GPUs in question…not being sold to anyone but NVIDIA.

All of this is really bad, and apparently isn’t even that useful to OpenAI, which, The Information says, would only save 10-15% on these GPUs by leasing them.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

Between NVIDIA and Oracle, OpenAI has now committed to 17 gigawatts of AI data center capacity, and to be clear, it takes about 2.5 gigawatts and more than $32.5 billion per gigawatt. There is no way these data centers actually get completed before 2028.
www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

It Takes 2.5 Years and $32.5 Billion Per Gigawatt Of Data Center Compute
Anyway, I want to get really specific about this, because the rest of the media is reporting these stories as if these data centers will pop up overnight, and the money will magically appear, and that there will, indeed, be enough of it to go around.

Based on current reports, it’s taking Oracle and Crusoe around 2.5 years per gigawatt of data center capacity. Crusoe’s 1.2GW of compute for OpenAI is a $15 billion joint venture, which means a gigawatt of compute runs about $12.5 billion. Abilene’s 8 buildings are meant to hold 50,000 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs and their associated networking infrastructure, so let’s say a gigawatt is around 333,333 Blackwell GPUs at $60,000 a piece, so about $20 billion a gigawatt.

So, each gigawatt is about $32.5 billion. For OpenAI to actually receive its $100 billion in funding from NVIDIA will require them to spend roughly $325 billion — consisting of $125 billion in data center infrastructure costs and $200 billion in GPUs.

If you’re reporting this story without at least attempting to report these numbers, you are failing to give the general public the full extent of what these companies are promising.

According to the New York Times, OpenAI has “agreements in place to build more than $400 billion in data center infrastructure” but also has now promised to spend $400 billion with Oracle over the next five years.

What the fuck is going on? Are we just reporting any old shit that somebody says? Oracle hasn’t even got the money to pay for those data centers! Oracle is currently raising $15 billion in bonds to get a start on…something, even though $15 billion is a drop in the bucket for the sheer scale and cost of these data centers. Thankfully, Vantage Data Centers is raising $25 billion to handle the Shackelford (ready, at best, in mid-to-late 2027) and Port Washington Wisconsin (we have no idea, it doesn’t even appear Vantage has broken ground) data center plan…

Anyway, putting all of that aside, OpenAI has now made multiple egregious, ridiculous, fantastical and impossible promises to many different parties, in amounts ranging from $50 million to $400 billion, all of which are due within the next five years. It will require hundreds of billions of dollars — either through direct funding, loans, or having partners like Oracle or NVIDIA take the burden, though at this point I believe both companies are genuinely failing their investors by not protecting them from Clammy Sam Altman, a career liar who somehow believes he can mobilize nearly a trillion dollars and have the media print anything he says, mostly because they will print anything he says, even when he says he wants to build 1 Gigawatt of AI infrastructure a week.

Today, I’m going to go into detail about every single promise made by Sam Altman and his cadre of charlatans, and give you as close to a hard dollar amount as I can as what it would cost to meet these promises.

To be clear, I am aware that in some of these cases another party will take on the burden of capital — but these dollars must be raised, and OpenAI must make sure they are raised.

I’ll also get into the raw costs of running OpenAI, and how dire things look when you add everything up. In fact, based on my calculations, OpenAI needs at least $500 billion just to fund its own operations, and at least $432 billion or more through partners or associated entities raising debt just to make it through the next few years.

And that's if OpenAI hits the insane revenue targets it's set!

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

I spoke with analyst Gil Luria at D.A. Davidson, asking if the capital existed to build OpenAI's promised 17GW of data centers.

He said "of course there isn't enough capital for all of this," but "enough capital to do this for a at least a little while longer."

www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 13d

Premium newsletter: Based on my estimates and analysis, OpenAI needs one trillion dollars in the next four years to build 17GW of data centers and other commitments, with at least $500 billion needed for company operations. There is not enough capital to do this.

www.wheresyoured.at/openai-onetr...

OpenAI Needs A Trillion Dollars In The Next Four Years

Shortly before publishing this newsletter, I spoke with analyst Gil Luria, Managing Director and Analyst at D.A. Davidson, and asked him whether the capital was there to build the 17 Gigawatts of capa...

www.wheresyoured.at

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Nikolas Kozloff @nikolaskozloff.bsky.social · 1d

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

‘It made my day more meaningful’: the Japanese gen Zers attempting a two-hour limit on smartphone use

Authorities in Japan are taking action against excessive phone time – but what is it like to restrict scrolling to 120 minutes a day?

www.theguardian.com

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Tory Stephens @torystephens.bsky.social · 2d

New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule.

Poor economics drove the aging New Hampshire plant offline three years early, even as the Trump administration pushes to revitalize coal.

www.canarymedia.com/articles/fos...

#NH #MA #ME #BosPoli #MassPoli #Climate

New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule

Poor economics drove the aging New Hampshire plant offline three years early, even as the Trump administration pushes to revitalize coal.

www.canarymedia.com

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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 2d

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature for the 2025 National Book Awards.

Here are the 2025 National Book Awards finalists.

Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists in all five categories—Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature—for the 2025 National Book Award…

buff.ly

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Grist @grist.org · 3d

In Arizona, a fight against a deadly fungus is under threat from Trump’s health policies.

What one doctor’s quest to stop valley fever says about America’s preparedness for climate-driven disease.

grist.org/health/valle...

#AZ #Arizona #Climate #Health #PublicHealth #Disease

In Arizona, a fight against a deadly fungus is under threat from Trump’s health policies

What one Arizona doctor’s quest to stop valley fever says about America’s preparedness for climate-driven disease.

grist.org

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Caitlin Gilbert @caitlingilbert.bsky.social · 2d

🤳EXCLUSIVE: We analyzed real data from over 800 U.S. TikTok users to reveal how the app transforms casual users into power users.

Extremely proud of this one, over a year in the making w/ @richardsima.bsky.social Leslie Shapiro @asteckelberg.bsky.social @ence.bsky.social

wapo.st/4obueib

Here’s how TikTok ‘power users’ end up scrolling 4 hours a day or more

Washington Post reporters analyzed data from over 800 TikTok users to learn how the app turns people into power users, some of whom spend hours per day scrolling.

wapo.st

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 2d

Some highlights from this pod with Oregon AG Dan Rayfield: He tells me Dem AGs are preparing for the likelihood that Trump will expand efforts to federalize National Guards and deploy them in more cities.

Trump is trying to normalize troops in US cities, he says.

newrepublic.com/article/2014...

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 2d

Trump's tweet that Portland is "war ravaged" just backfired. A Trump-picked judge cited it in blocking National Guard deployment to Portland, declaring him "untethered from facts."

On the pod, Oregon AG Dan Rayfield illuminatingly explains the ruling and what's next:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Trump’s Own Tweet on Portland Backfires as Judge Deals Him Harsh Loss

As a judge’s blunt ruling blocks Trump from deploying troops in Portland, Oregon’s Attorney General tells us in an interview that Trump’s lawless threats are working against him—and discusses what com...

newrepublic.com

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 2d

News that shocks no one: Carbon offsets do nothing for climate.

Carbon offsets fail to cut global heating due to ‘intractable’ systemic problems, study says

Analysis of 25 years of evidence shows most schemes are poor quality and fail to lower emissions

www.theguardian.com

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Scott MacFarlane @macfarlanenews.bsky.social · 2d

Foreclosures are surging as U.S. homeowners grapple with rising costs

www.cbsnews.com/news/housing...

Foreclosures are surging as U.S. homeowners grapple with rising costs

A growing number of Americans, squeezed by inflation and elevated interest rates, face the risk of losing their home in foreclosure.

www.cbsnews.com

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Grist @grist.org · 6d

Studies reinforce the toll extreme weather events can take on relationships.

Researchers suspect that surviving a life-threatening disaster can motivate people to reevaluate what’s important to them, sometimes drawing them closer, sometimes pulling them apart. grist.org/culture/how-...