Nvidia and OpenAI are poised to rewrite the terms of their alliance. According to the Financial Times (FT), the world leader in GPUs is in the final stages of negotiations to invest $30 billion in capital into the inventor of ChatGPT, replacing the $100 billion partnership announced with fanfare but which never advanced beyond a letter of intent.
OpenAI plans to reinvest a large portion of the funds raised into purchasing Nvidia hardware.
Nvidia’s investment is part of a broader fundraising round that is expected to exceed $100 billion in total, valuing OpenAI at around $730 billion excluding any new capital.
The new arrangement is markedly simpler than the previous one. The September agreement envisaged Nvidia investing in $10 billion tranches over several years, as OpenAI’s compute needs grew. In return, OpenAI would commit to purchasing millions of Nvidia chips to deploy up to 10 gigawatts of compute capacity. A setup that resembled a cross-shareholder pact.
The autumn of 2024 had marked a period of bidding up alliances forged by Sam Altman, who had multiplied complex deals with rival chipmakers (AMD and Broadcom) but also with Oracle. These structures, lauded by markets at the time, nonetheless unsettled some analysts, who saw signs of a bubble forming in the AI sector.
The Two Leaders’ Alignment
These concerns soon materialized. Since the start of the year, American tech stocks have fallen about 17%, undermining the credibility of these multi-year, large-scale commitments. In January, The Wall Street Journal had already reported that the $100 billion deal was “on hold.”
Even before the deal was formalized, rumors of tensions between the two companies began to circulate. Sam Altman and Jensen Huang publicly denied them. The OpenAI chief stated this month on X that Nvidia makes “the best AI chips in the world” and that he hopes to remain a major customer “for a very long time.” The following day, Nvidia’s CEO dismissed any notion of “controversy” on CNBC, calling the rumors “stupidity.”
600 Billion in Spending by 2030
Nvidia’s investment is only one component of a much larger fundraising round. According to the FT, SoftBank is also set to inject $30 billion, while Amazon could contribute up to $50 billion as part of a partnership involving the use of OpenAI’s models. Microsoft and MGX, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign technology fund, are also expected to participate in the multi-billion range. Meetings with venture-capital funds and other investors are underway to complete the round.
Facing these investors, OpenAI is taking an assertive stance, stating plans to spend around $600 billion on compute resources, with Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft notably among the primary suppliers, by 2030, again according to the FT.
