Amazon, Oracle Reports Add to Concerns Over 'AI Trade'

Coming off our move to start a position in Broadcom (AVGO) shares on Wednesday morning, reports are circulating that Amazon (AMZN) and OpenAI are in conversations that could lead to Amazon investing $10 billion in OpenAI.

While the talks are being described as "preliminary," they also imply that such a deal would include OpenAI using Amazon’s Trainium AI chips, a positive for Broadcom as well as our Marvell (MRVL) shares. Amazon has invested around $8 billion in Anthropic, and as we discussed on Wednesday morning, Broadcom has received billions in chip orders from Anthropic over the last two quarters.

Here's the thing: the reported conversation between Amazon and OpenAI follows the early November announcement that OpenAI signed a $38 billion deal. With that in mind, Wednesday's reports have the potential to rekindle recent “shell game” concerns for what folks refer to as "the AI trade." To that, we can add other reports out Wednesday morning that Oracle’s (ORCL) plans for a $10 billion data center in Michigan are being called into question as funding talks with private capital group Blue Owl Capital may have “broken down.”

This comes after Oracle’s net debt, including lease obligations, climbed to $105 billion at the end of November compared to $78 billion roughly a year earlier. By comparison, Amazon exited the September quarter with cash, equivalents and marketable securities of $101 billion versus $52.6 billion in debt and another $78.3 billion in long-term lease liabilities. Over at Meta (META) , those figures were $44.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, $28.8 billion in long-term debt and $20.1 billion in long-term operating leases. Exiting its October quarter, Nvidia's (NVDA) net cash position totaled about $52 billion.

The difference in those balance sheets explains the ability of Amazon, Nvidia and others to make these investments in OpenAI, Anthropic and others. It also means that when OpenAI and Anthropic go public before too long, we are likely to see a monetization event that brings cash back into Amazon, Nvidia as well as SuRo Capital (SSSS) .

Given the expected AI and data center buildout over the coming years, the same that should drive robust demand for AI and data center chips, servers, networking and related equipment, we will want to keep watch on hyperscaler balance sheets over the ensuing quarters. Should we see a demonstrative increase in net debt levels, it would be a yellow flag for us, as would a slowdown in incremental AI adoption and usage growth.

Follow-Up on Broadcom

Out of the gate, our new position in AVGO shares is moving lower, but we discussed the potential for that and what our plan would be if that happened. In the chart, we see a gap that would be filled near the $305 level, and if AVGO shares find their way there, the filling of that gap would likely see us scoop up additional shares, reducing our cost basis in the process.

After Wednesday night's close, Micron (MU) will report, and following the recent 2026 forecast increase for DRAM by research firm TrendForce, it should be a positive one.

In November, TrendForce saw 2026 DRAM industry revenue rising 70% year over year to just over $300 billion from about $163 billion this year. In the last few days, TrendForce upped those figures to about $334 billion in 2026 and $166 billion in 2025. In Micron’s end market commentary and outlook, we’ll be following what it says about its capacity levels and where demand strength is greatest across AI and data center, smartphone, PC and others.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AVGO, AMZN, MRVL, META, NVDA and SSSS.