How the Iran war could split the AI boom in twoBy Parmy Olson / Bloomberg OpinionThe Iran war has laid bare a paradox: Gulf money is helping underwrite the US’ effort to win the artificial intelligence (AI) race, and now the US has started a conflict that could destabilize those investments. Some estimates have projected US$2 trillion in long-term pledges from Middle Eastern nations to the AI boom, money that now looks precarious. Among the architects of the latter component, Anthropic has chugged along rather well with annualized revenue more than doubling in the last three months to US$19 billion, while OpenAI revenue is at around US$25 billion. For all the worries about OpenAI’s high cash-burn rate, the AI labs also benefit from sticky enterprise contracts. Energy and cash from the Gulf have helped fuel the AI boom.

Source: Taipei Times March 28, 2026 18:31 UTC