Nvidia will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI
Chipmaking giant Nvidia plans to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI and supply the startup with its advanced data center chips, the companies announced Monday. The deal marks one of the largest commitments yet in the accelerating race to dominate global artificial intelligence.
Under the agreement, Nvidia will begin delivering chips to OpenAI in late 2026. The arrangement involves two separate but linked transactions: OpenAI will purchase chips directly from Nvidia with cash, while Nvidia will acquire a non-controlling equity stake in OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The first $10 billion tranche of Nvidia’s investment will take effect once OpenAI finalizes a definitive agreement for chip purchases. OpenAI was last valued at around $500 billion.
A Landmark Partnership
The companies have signed a letter of intent to launch a strategic partnership that will deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia chips to support OpenAI’s next-generation infrastructure. The first deployment phase is expected to go live in the second half of 2026, with further details of the partnership to be finalized in the coming weeks.
“Everything starts with compute,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a statement. “Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilize what we’re building with Nvidia to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”
Market and Industry Ripples
News of the deal boosted investor sentiment across the AI sector. Nvidia shares rose 4.4%, while Oracle—which partners with OpenAI, SoftBank, and Microsoft on the massive $500 billion Stargate AI data center project—saw shares gain nearly 5%.
The partnership underscores Nvidia’s increasingly central role in AI infrastructure. The company recently pledged $5 billion to Intel in a separate bid to shore up the struggling chipmaker and expand collaboration on AI hardware.
Nvidia has also been a long-time backer of OpenAI, participating in a $6.6 billion funding round in October 2024.
Antitrust Questions Loom
The scale of Nvidia’s fresh investment could invite renewed antitrust scrutiny, particularly as regulators have already raised concerns about the growing concentration of power among Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia.
In June 2024, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission agreed on jurisdictional boundaries that cleared the way for potential investigations into these firms’ dominance in the AI industry.
Still, under the Trump administration’s lighter regulatory approach, scrutiny may not translate into immediate obstacles for the deal.
Shifting Structures at OpenAI
The partnership comes as OpenAI and its key backer Microsoft prepare for a restructuring into a for-profit entity, following a non-binding agreement reached earlier this month to redefine their relationship.
Together, these moves highlight the growing interdependence of the biggest names in AI, as they pool resources to scale the compute power needed for the next wave of breakthroughs.
