Where the data comes from
Every number on the site comes from one article, "Joining the dots between big AI", which FT Alphaville published on 18 September 2026. FT says that three analysts at Sona Asset Management compiled the data and shared it with FT Alphaville. The analysts are Craig Nicol, Oleg Melentyev and Charlie Callan. FT describes the data as 176 deals between 202 companies and other organisations, worth $3.6tn in total, made in the three and a half years to August 2026.
The article contains three interactive charts, and I copied the data directly from them. FT last changed the data in the charts on 16 September 2026 and 17 September 2026. The first chart shows which companies are linked, and it gives each company's totals. The second chart lists every deal for OpenAI and Anthropic. The third chart shows Sona's estimates of how much of a supplier's revenue comes from each customer, for 5 suppliers. The site uses all three charts, and I have not added data from any other source. The site calls every name in the data a company, although some of the names are funds, banks, projects or groups of companies. The site shows each name as FT published it, because FT counts each name among its 202.
What I checked
I checked that the data on the site is an exact copy of the data FT published. I did not check whether FT or Sona reported each deal correctly, because Sona's research is not public.
- I read the data in three separate ways, and all three gave exactly the same result. First, I downloaded the data from each chart. Second, I ran FT's own code in a separate program, so that the result did not depend on my own reading of the data. Third, I read the data from inside the charts on the FT page.
- The totals that FT states can be rebuilt from the data. The amounts promised to companies add up to $3,602bn, which FT rounds to $3.6tn, and the number of companies comes to FT's 202. The amounts promised to the companies shown on the site add up to the same total.
- FT's deal list agrees with FT's company totals. For OpenAI and for Anthropic, the total promised to the company equals the sum of the listed deals exactly, and so does the total promised by the company. The two lists disagree about one deal, which the section on names below describes.
- Every company in FT's list of companies is on the site, and every company total on the site equals FT's number. Every link on the site is a link in FT's data, and every deal and every share of revenue that FT published is on the company by company page.
How the numbers on the site compare with FT's numbers
The site shows the same 202 companies and the same $3.6tn that FT describes. FT does not say how it counted 202. The site counts every company name in FT's list of companies and FT's list of links, and it counts the two pieces of one split name as one company. The two tables show the steps.
| Companies in FT's list of companies | 196 |
|---|---|
| Companies named only in FT's list of links | +7 |
| Two pieces of one name, counted as one company | −1 |
| Companies on the site, which is also FT's count | 202 |
| Rows in FT's list of links | 387 |
|---|---|
| Empty rows | −49 |
| Rows in which neither name is a company | −15 |
| One row that links a company to itself | −1 |
| Rows that name a company | 322 |
| Rows that repeat a pair of companies already listed | −50 |
| Links on the site | 272 |
A count of the names in FT's list of links alone also gives 202, because it leaves out the company with no link and counts the two pieces of the split name as two companies. FT's list of companies gives two totals for each company. The 7 companies below are named only in FT's list of links, so FT gives no totals for them.
- Google; Broadcom
- OpenAI Stargate Abilene campus investor group (CRUSOE-ABILENE-2025)
- SK Group
- SK Group / SK Telecom / SK hynix / NVIDIA
- Wayve investor group (WAYVE-2024-05-SC)
- xAI investor group (XAI-2024-12-SC)
- xAI investor group (XAI-2026-01-SE)
FT counts 176 deals, and the site counts 272 links. The two numbers measure different things. A link is a pair of companies, and a deal with several investors appears in FT's list as one row for each investor. FT did not publish its list of deals, so the site cannot show the 176 deals one by one.
Rows in FT's data that do not name a company
Each row in FT's list of links has two names. The first name is the company that promised the money, and the second name is the company that receives it. No row in the list has an amount. In 39 rows, one name or both names is a label that FT's data uses in place of a company name.
- In 24 rows a named investor, such as Goldman Sachs, promises money to "Investor group (synthetic)". The label stands for groups of investors that the data does not name. The site draws the 24 rows, and it shows the label as a circle called "Unnamed investor groups". The circle is not counted as a company. The 16 investors below appear in FT's data only in the 24 rows.
- Bain Capital Ventures
- Blue Owl Capital
- CPP Investments
- Credit Agricole CIB
- General Atlantic
- Goldman Sachs
- Hyundai Motor Group
- JPMorgan (reported)
- Michael Dell family office
- Morgan Stanley
- NVIDIA (reported tenant, officially unnamed high-investment-grade tenant)
- PGIM Real Estate
- Primary Digital Infrastructure
- Situational Awareness
- Sixth Street Growth
- Sony Semiconductor Solutions
- In 15 rows "Investor group (synthetic)" promises money to a type of company, such as "Model lab" or "Neocloud / GPU cloud". Neither name in the row is a company, so the site leaves the 15 rows out.
- One of the 16 investors is a name that FT's data holds in two pieces, "NVIDIA (reported tenant" and "officially unnamed high-investment-grade tenant)". The opening bracket on one piece and the closing bracket on the other show that one name was split at its comma. The site puts the name back together as "NVIDIA (reported tenant, officially unnamed high-investment-grade tenant)", and it counts the name as one company. A tenant is a company that rents a building, and in FT's data the building is a data centre. The name means that the owner of a data centre did not name its tenant, and that press reports said the tenant was NVIDIA.
Names that differ between FT's lists
FT's list of links and FT's deal list sometimes give the same party different names. The company by company page puts the amount of a deal beside a link only when the two names in the deal match the two names in the link. Every other deal is still in the deal list on the page, with a note from the site where the names differ.
- FT's deal list names a cloud business, such as Microsoft Azure, where FT's list of links names the owner, Microsoft. FT's totals show that the two names are one party, because Microsoft's total of $280bn is exactly the sum of the two Azure deals. The site therefore shows the Azure amounts beside the links to Microsoft, and it does the same for Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
- FT's deal list has three deals with the OpenAI Deployment Company, which OpenAI set up with a group of partners. FT's list of links records all three deals under OpenAI, and FT's total for OpenAI includes the $4bn promised to the OpenAI Deployment Company. The site follows FT's list of links, so the deals on OpenAI's page add up to FT's total of $275.3bn.
- FT's deal list names "OpenAI / Stargate" in two deals that FT's list of links records under OpenAI, and the site treats the two names as one party.
- FT's deal list records a deal by a group of investors under the group's name, such as "Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank". FT's list of links has one link for each member of the group. The site cannot divide the group's amount between the members, so the amount is in the deal list on the page and it is not beside a link.
- FT's two lists disagree about one deal. FT's deal list says that Anthropic promised $40bn to "SpaceX / xAI compute infrastructure". FT's list of links has no link between the two names. It has a link from Anthropic to "SpaceX" instead, and FT's total of money promised to SpaceX is $65bn. The site shows both lists as FT published them, and the company by company page has a note beside the deal and beside the link.
- FT's deal list has 60 rows for 59 deals, because one deal appears twice, under OpenAI and under Anthropic.
- FT spells one company as both Coreweave and CoreWeave, and the site treats the two spellings as one company. FT's third chart spells SK hynix as "SK Hynix", and the site uses the spelling from FT's list of companies.
Other differences between FT's lists and the site
- One company in FT's list of companies, Hut 8 Beacon Point AI Data Center Campus, has $19.6bn promised to it, but no row in FT's list of links names it. The site shows it as a circle with no lines, because the data does not say which company promised the money.
- Where FT lists the same pair of companies more than once, the site draws one link.
- One row links NEXTDC to itself, and the site leaves the row out.
- Applied Digital, Apple and SMCI appear in FT's third chart and are not in FT's list of companies. The site shows their shares of revenue on the pages of the companies they trade with, and it does not count them among the 202 companies.
How to read the numbers
- The amounts are promises that companies have announced, such as investments, loans, leases and contracts to buy services. Some of the promises are early agreements, such as letters of intent. None of the amounts is cash that has already been paid.
- Most of the amounts have not been disclosed. A link with no amount means the amount was not published, and it does not mean the amount was small. For the same reason, the total of money promised and the total of money received are not equal.
- When a group of investors made a deal together, FT's data records the deal under the group. For example, FT's article says Amazon put about $50bn into OpenAI, but the data records the money inside one $110bn row for "Amazon, NVIDIA, SoftBank" together. Amazon's own total is therefore $8bn, which is the sum of its three investments in Anthropic.
- In the chart of all companies, a link shows that one company has promised money to another, and it does not show the amount. FT published an amount for each deal only for OpenAI and Anthropic, and the company by company page shows the amounts for the two companies.
- The shares of revenue on the company by company page are Sona's estimates. FT's chart is called "Top 5 demand-side reliance", and its subtitle is "Share of company revenue dependent on AI ecosystem". FT's chart does not say which period the estimates cover.
- The site highlights loops, which are routes along the links that return to the company where they started. I calculated the loops myself from FT's links. FT reports that Sona marks about 120 of its 176 deals as "high circularity". Sona's test is broader than a loop and its results are not in the published data, so the site does not show them.