Plot twist! In what could be both a hedge and a power play, OpenAI just pledged 6 gigawatts of computing power to data centers running exclusively on AMD chips, a massive pivot that shakes Nvidia’s presumed grip on the AI hardware market.

Only weeks ago, Nvidia and OpenAI announced a $100 billion partnership. Now, with a new $26 billion equity stake in AMD and plans for multi-generation chip development, Sam Altman appears to be betting on both sides. To investors, it’s diversification. To Nvidia, is it starting to look like a stab in the back?

The deal gives AMD a fast pass into the center of AI’s spending frenzy and adds more fuel to a bubble already swollen with trillion-dollar infrastructure bets. Oracle, Broadcom, and others are all locked into multibillion-dollar contracts with OpenAI, each chasing a slice of the same overbuilt future.

The market will believe the story you tell about control… as long as you can back it up (or until you can’t at which point… pop!) Whoever shapes the storyline of progress controls the flow of investment.

Call us cynical but this feels like it's more about pumping up stock prices than building out infrastructure. OpenAI is aggressively controlling the narrative. By investing in AMD, it’s signaling power and independence from Nvidia.

AI is steadily its place in B2B sales, but so far and for the foreseeable future, not at the expense of people. According to new Gartner research, by 2030, three-quarters of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences led by humans, not algorithms. After years of chasing efficiency, buyers are showing fatigue with digital-only, rep-free journeys.

Use AI to automate the noise: research, lead scoring, scheduling, etc. Your human sellers can focus where they matter most: navigating complexity, building confidence, and closing deals.

Growth won’t go to the most automated. It’ll go to the best orchestrated, those who blend the precision of AI with the empathy of experience.

Growth from AI is going to depend on a hybrid approach:

The right tech, the right timing, the right (human) touch.

We help B2B teams strike the right balance, using AI to scale smartly while keeping story, strategy, and connection unmistakably human.

It really does seem that the traditional B2B playbook is cracking under pressure. Buyers are tuning out noise. CFOs are questioning ROI. And too many marketers are still running the same plays they did in 2019.

Meanwhile, the world has changed in myriad ways.

Next week at Advertising Week New York, LinkedIn, Edelman, Creator Authority, and Pavillion are teaming up to talk about what replaces the traditional approach, a new blueprint for B2B growth.

Growth now starts with brand: builds trust (hmmm… this sounds familiar.) Credibility: drives influence (Tom Nichols will be thrilled that expertise is not, in fact, dead.) Creativity: cuts through sameness (B2C tactics anyone?)

If you take note of the themes we regularly reinforce here at B2BOOM!, this sums them up very succinctly.

This is the next operating system for B2B: trust-led, creator-driven, and designed for a generation that believes people more than platforms.

If you’re fortunate enough to be at #AWNewYork, make time for The New Blueprint for B2B Marketing Success:

B2BMX @ Advertising Week
Thursday @ 9:50 AM EDT

We’ll be waiting (impatiently) for the YouTube replay.

For years, CMOs have defended brand spend on conviction alone. But belief, as you likely know, doesn’t move CFOs. They're numbers people.

In an article for The CMO Club, Kevan Lee, former VP Marketing at Buffer and now at Bonfire, outlines a practical framework for proving brand’s business value, one that connects awareness and trust directly to revenue.

The shift moves the conversation from “brand feels right” to “brand pays off.”

Aided and unaided awareness surveys, share of voice, and branded search traffic form the baseline, then the focus shifts to brand-attributed revenue and ROI signals like higher lifetime value and lower acquisition costs among brand-aware buyers.

Lee contends the approach creates a full-funnel view that shows how top-of-funnel brand work compounds into profit.

Belief builds brands, but measurement funds them.

Faith in brand just isn’t enough anymore. You need evidence. Growing that budget means showing belief on a balance sheet.

Belief built it. Proof will scale it.

We help B2B teams connect the dots between awareness and revenue building systems that show how brand drives growth, lowers acquisition costs, and wins trust that converts.

The next era of growth belongs to the brands that can show their math.

The days of “more”, more spend, more content, more noise, are over. CMOs aren’t being judged on activity. They’re being measured on proof. Every campaign, every dollar, every impression needs to ladder back to something real: trust built, revenue influenced, efficiency gained.

Brand still matters. Maybe more than ever.

—Jay