There's a new visualization making the rounds that maps every major AI investment deal. And if you stare at it long enough, you start to see something deeply weird.
The money isn't flowing into AI. It's circling in AI.
Company A invests in Company B. Company B buys from Company A. Both report "growth." Valuations go up. Rinse, repeat.
This isn't a market. It's a merry-go-round.
The Circular Money Machine
An independent researcher built an interactive map tracking over $2 trillion in AI-related investments and commercial deals. The visualization shows how capital flows between Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and about 50 other companies.
And the pattern is impossible to miss: the money keeps looping back.
Here's how it works. Microsoft invests billions in OpenAI. OpenAI spends that money buying Nvidia chips and Microsoft cloud credits. Microsoft reports cloud revenue growth. Nvidia reports record chip sales. OpenAI gets valued higher because it's "scaling fast."
Everyone wins. Except the money never actually left the circle.
As the site notes: "55% of this is promises. Not cash. Promises."
The Nvidia Gravity Well
If you zoom out, you see another pattern: almost every AI company orbits Nvidia. They have to. There's no real alternative if you want to train large models at scale.
But is trying to change that. They've built a parallel universe around their TPU chips, and they're throwing billions at companies like to use them. is now playing both sides—$68 billion in commitments from , but they're still buying chips too.
