Chipmaker Nvidia will invest up to $US100 billion ($150 billion) in OpenAI to allow the ChatGPT maker to scale up its artificial intelligence compute “on the path to deploying superintelligence”, the US companies announced on Tuesday after signing a letter of intent.
The partnership would see Nvidia — now one of the most valuable companies in the world thanks to the generative AI boom — “progressively” invest in OpenAI as the two firms deployed “at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centres” for OpenAI in the coming years.
The rollout would consist of millions of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) — the computer chips largely responsible for the genAI boom, and much of Nvidia’s recent commercial success.
OpenAI is facing competition from tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta in the race to superintelligence — a theoretical future in which AI has become smarter than humans.
The company’s planned deal with Nvidia would see it use the chipmaker as “a preferred strategic compute and networking partner for its AI factory growth plans”, while the two firms would also work together to optimise Nvidia’s hardware and software.
OpenAI’s first gigawatt of new Nvidia systems would be brought online in the second half of 2026 using the Nvidia Vera Rubin platform, said the two companies, which planned to finalise their agreement in the coming weeks.
‘The biggest AI infrastructure project in history’?
Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC the new agreement would be “the biggest AI infrastructure project in history”, despite Nvidia having also agreed to take part in the United States’ AI infrastructure project Stargate — which is expected to see up to $US500 billion ($750 billion) of investment in the coming years.
In a statement, Huang said Nvidia's new deal with OpenAI marked “the next leap forward” after the two companies had “pushed each other for a decade” to improve their technologies.
OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman added, “Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilise what we’re building with Nvidia to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”
The two companies added in their release that their partnership “complements the deep work OpenAI and Nvidia are already doing with a broad network of collaborators, including Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and Stargate partners, focused on building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure".
[L to R] OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Image: Nvidia / Supplied
Microsoft gets equity in OpenAI, Nvidia invests in Intel
The latest collaboration between OpenAI and Nvidia comes after fellow OpenAI investor Microsoft announced earlier this month that it would receive a $US100 billion ($150 billion) equity stake in OpenAI’s for-profit corporation.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 and is technically controlled by its nonprofit arm, but its for-profit subsidiary now commercialises its AI products and services.
The company is also working on a range of yet-to-be-announced consumer devices which are expected to integrate its AI models.
Nvidia also announced last week that it would invest $US5 billion ($7.5 billion) in fellow chipmaker Intel, which has struggled to capitalise on increasing demand for the GPUs needed to run AI applications.
The two chipmakers pledged to “jointly develop multiple generations of custom data centre and PC products that accelerate applications and workloads across hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets”.
