At almost the identical second as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was expressing shock over OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar deal with competitor AMD — shortly after his firm agreed to invest up to $100 billion into the AI mannequin maker — Sam Altman was saying that extra such offers are within the works.
Huang appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. When requested if he knew in regards to the AMD deal earlier than it was introduced, he answered, “Probably not.”
As TechCrunch beforehand reported, OpenAI’s cope with AMD is unusual. AMD has agreed to grant OpenAI massive tranches of AMD inventory — as much as 10% of the corporate over a interval of years contingent on components like will increase in inventory value. In alternate, OpenAI will use and assist develop the chipmaker’s next-generation AI GPUs chips. This makes OpenAI a shareholder in AMD.
Nvidia’s deal is the reverse. Nvidia has invested within the AI model-making startup, making it a shareholder in OpenAI.
Whereas OpenAI has been utilizing Nvidia gear for years by way of cloud suppliers like Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI, and CoreWeave, “That is the primary time we’re going to promote on to them,” Huang defined. He added that his firm would nonetheless proceed to produce gear to the cloud makers, too.
These direct gross sales, which embrace AI gear past GPUs like techniques and networking, are supposed to “put together” OpenAI for the day when it’s its personal “self-hosted hyperscaler,” Huang stated. In different phrases, when it’s utilizing its personal information facilities.
However Huang admits that OpenAI doesn’t “have the cash but” to pay for all of this gear. He estimated that every gigawatt of AI information heart will price OpenAI “$50 to $60 billion,” to cowl all the things from the land and energy to the servers and gear.
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To date, in 2025, OpenAI has commissioned 10 gigawatts’ value of U.S. amenities by way of its $500 billion Stargate cope with companions Oracle and SoftBank. (Plus, it penned a $300 billion cloud cope with Oracle.)
Its partnership with Nvidia was for not less than 10 gigawatts of AI information facilities. Its partnership with AMD was for six gigawatts. Plus its “Stargate UK” partnership entails increasing information facilities within the U.Ok., and it has different European commitments. By some estimates, OpenAI has this yr inked $1 trillion worth of such deals.
Much like the AMD deal, Nvidia’s deal has been criticized for being “round,” Bloomberg reported. The critics say Nvidia is basically underwriting OpenAI’s purchases, getting the AI startup’s inventory for its efforts.
Altman to the world: Anticipate extra
As Huang was dissecting OpenAI’s infrastructure wants on CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interview with Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Podcast dropped.
Through the podcast, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz instructed Altman that he’s “very impressed by deal construction enchancment,” referring to those most up-to-date offers. Andreessen Horowitz is an OpenAI investor, so it will be stunning if he wasn’t impressed. OpenAI has discovered a method to probably get hold of billions of {dollars} of kit on another person’s dime. Repeatedly.
When requested about these latest offers, Altman stated, “You need to anticipate way more from us within the coming months.”
Altman sees OpenAI’s future fashions and upcoming different merchandise as a lot extra succesful, thereby fueling a lot extra demand, that “now we have determined that it’s time to go make a really aggressive infrastructure guess,” he defined.
The issue is that OpenAI’s income at present is at present nowhere close to a $1 trillion, although it’s, by all accounts, rising quickly, reportedly hitting $4.5 billion within the first half of 2025.
But Altman clearly believes that ultimately all of this funding pays for itself. “I’ve by no means been extra assured within the analysis highway map in entrance of us and in addition the financial worth that may come from utilizing these [future] fashions.”
However, he stated, OpenAI can’t get to all of that financial lushness by itself.
“To make the guess at this scale, we type of want the entire business, or massive chunk of the business, to assist it. And that is from the extent of electrons to mannequin distribution and all of the stuff in between, which is rather a lot. So we’re going to associate with lots of people,” Altman stated, with extra offers anticipated within the coming months.
So stand by, tech business. OpenAI remains to be wheeling and dealing.
