At almost the same time that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed surprise at OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar deal with rival AMD — shortly after his company agreed to invest up to $100 billion in the AI model maker — Sam Altman said more such deals were in the works.
Huang appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. When asked if he knew about the AMD deal before it was announced, he said, “Not really.”
As TechCrunch previously reported, the deal between OpenAI and AMD is unusual. AMD agreed to grant OpenAI large tranches of AMD stock – up to 10% of the company over a period of years, depending on factors such as stock price increases. In exchange, OpenAI will use and help develop the chipmaker’s next-generation AI GPU chips. This makes OpenAI a shareholder of AMD.
Nvidia’s deal is the opposite. Nvidia has invested in the AI model-building startup, making it a shareholder in OpenAI.
While OpenAI has used Nvidia equipment for years through cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI and CoreWeave, “this is the first time we’ve sold directly to them,” Huang said. He added that his company would also continue to supply hardware to cloud manufacturers.
These direct sales, which include AI equipment beyond GPUs like systems and networks, are intended to “prepare” OpenAI for the day when it becomes its own “self-hosted hyperscaler,” Huang said. In other words, when it uses its own data centers.
But Huang admits that OpenAI doesn’t “yet have the money” to pay for all that equipment. He estimated that each gigawatt of AI data center would cost OpenAI “$50 billion to $60 billion,” to cover everything from land and electricity to servers and equipment.
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So far in 2025, OpenAI has commissioned US facilities worth 10 gigawatts as part of its $500 billion Stargate deal with partners Oracle and SoftBank. (Plus, it signed a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle.)
Its partnership with Nvidia involved at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers. Its partnership with AMD covered 6 gigawatts. Additionally, its “Stargate UK” partnership involves the expansion of data centers in the UK and has other European commitments. By some estimates, OpenAI has signed such deals worth $1 trillion this year.
Similar to the AMD deal, Nvidia’s deal was criticized for being so-called “circular,” Bloomberg reported. Critics say Nvidia is essentially underwriting OpenAI’s purchases, effectively getting the AI startup’s stock for its efforts.
Altman to the World: Expect More
As Huang dissected OpenAI’s infrastructure needs on CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interview with Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z podcast was dropped.
During the pod, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz told Altman that he was “very impressed with the improvement in deal structure” in reference to these most recent deals. A16z is an OpenAI investor, so it would be shocking if he wasn’t impressed. OpenAI has found a way to potentially obtain billions of dollars worth of equipment at someone else’s expense. Repeatedly.
When asked about these recent deals, Altman said: “You should expect a lot more from us in the months to come. »
Altman sees OpenAI’s future models and other upcoming products as much more capable, fueling so much more demand, that “we decided it was time to make a very aggressive bet on infrastructure,” he explained.
The problem is that OpenAI’s revenue today is nowhere near $1 trillion, although it is by all accounts growing rapidly, reaching $4.5 billion in the first half of 2025.
Yet Altman obviously believes that ultimately, all of these investments will pay off. “I have never been more confident in the research roadmap that lies ahead and the economic value that will come from using these (future) models.”
But, he added, OpenAI cannot access all this economic wealth on its own.
“To make a bet on this scale, we kind of need the support of the entire industry, or a lot of the industry. And that goes from the electron level to model distribution and everything else, which is a lot. So we’re going to partner with a lot of people,” Altman said, with more deals expected in the coming months.
So stand by, tech industry. OpenAI is still active.
