Landmark deal is set to deploy unprecedented levels of computing infrastructure
Nvidia Corp., the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, announced Monday it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI through a strategic partnership that will deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for the artificial intelligence company’s next-generation infrastructure.
The chipmaker will make the investment progressively as each gigawatt of computing power is deployed, with the first gigawatt scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform. The partnership represents millions of graphics processing units and marks one of the largest infrastructure deployments in AI history.
Major leap forward
The deal involves two separate but connected transactions, according to a person close to OpenAI, as Reuters reported. Nvidia will invest in OpenAI for non-voting shares once the agreement is finalised, then OpenAI can use that funding to purchase Nvidia’s chips.
“Everything starts with compute,” said Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, in a statement. “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.”
“Nvidia and OpenAI have pushed each other for a decade, from the first DGX supercomputer to the breakthrough of ChatGPT,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “This investment and infrastructure partnership mark the next leap forward – deploying 10 gigawatts to power the next era of intelligence.”
Reuters reported that Nvidia shares rose as much as 4.4% after the announcement to a record intraday high, while data centre builder Oracle gained about 6%. The computing power for the planned systems equals the electricity needs of more than 8 million US households.
The agreement complements OpenAI’s existing partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and other Stargate collaborators focused on building advanced AI infrastructure globally. OpenAI currently serves over 700 million weekly active users and has strong adoption across enterprises, small businesses, and developers.
Potential regulatory concerns
The scale of Nvidia’s commitment could attract antitrust scrutiny, Reuters noted. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement in mid-2024 that cleared the way for potential probes into the roles of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia in the AI industry.
“The deal could change the economic incentives of Nvidia and OpenAI as it could potentially lock in Nvidia’s chip monopoly with OpenAI’s software lead,” said Andre Barlow, an antitrust lawyer with Doyle, Barlow & Mazard told Reuters. “It could potentially make it more difficult for Nvidia competitors like AMD in chips or OpenAI’s competitors in models to scale.”
However, the Trump administration has taken a lighter approach to competition issues compared to the previous Biden administration, removing regulatory hurdles that could slow AI growth.
A report from The New York Times noted that the partnership comes as OpenAI is separately pursuing a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank that could value the company at $300 billion, with talks underway for an additional $6 billion in employee share sales that would value OpenAI at around $500 billion.
