[kylecazar]

They're apparently not interested in building the chips themselves per the article, but rather 'getting' TSMC or another manufacturer to build them with the funds.

Which raises more questions than it answers. Why does OpenAI even need to be involved -- is this a common situation?

I would think the manufacturers would anticipate the huge impending demand for chips and raise the necessary investments to expand themselves.

[throwaway8877]

Without any special knowledge I would assume that their motivation is two-fold. First remove the middleman that is potentially adding a huge margin on top of the silicon, second remove the extra fluff on the silicon that is not necessary for their specific use case, making the cost smaller.