Nvidia to Invest $100 Billion in OpenAI

The project announcement briefly sent Nvidia stock to a 52-week high.

Nivida CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a news conference in Taipei. I-HWA CHENG/AFP via Getty Images

Nvidia plans on investing as much as $100 billion in artificial intelligence company OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership to expand OpenAI’s datacenter capacity.

On Sept. 22, the two technology companies announced they had signed a letter of intent to form a long-term partnership. The deal will enable OpenAI to build and deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI datacenter systems, with Nvidia providing millions of graphics processing units as well as network infrastructure. The first phase of the datacenter project is slated to come online in the second half of 2026.

“Nvidia and OpenAI have pushed each other for a decade, from the first DGX supercomputer to the breakthrough of ChatGPT,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said in a statement. “This investment and infrastructure partnership mark the next leap forward—deploying 10 gigawatts to power the next era of intelligence.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Nvidia will progressively invest in OpenAI as each gigawatt of infrastructure is deployed. The first $10 billion of investment is tied to the deployment of the initial gigawatt. Nvidia will take non-controlling shares in OpenAI and will act as a preferred supplier for chips and networking equipment.

The companies said they expect to finalize the details of the partnership in the coming weeks.

Investors demonstrated their approval of the announcement by briefly sending Nvidia shares to a 52-week high of $184.54 on Monday. As of about 2 p.m. EST, stock in the California-based company was trading for about $182.66 per share. That was an about 6 percent rise from the opening bell price of $175.35 a share.

As of Monday afternoon, Nvidia’s market capitalization had reached about $4.45 trillion. That put it ahead of market leaders Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., in terms of the collective value of its outstanding shares of stock.

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, serves more than 700 million weekly users worldwide. The planned data center buildout will require roughly the same amount of electricity as 8 million homes.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the investment represents a bet that the company can significantly improve both the capacity of its AI products and their financial returns.

“Everything starts with compute,” Altman said 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.”

The partnership complements OpenAI and Nvidia’s existing collaborations with major technology companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and Stargate, all of which are involved in building advanced AI infrastructure. OpenAI previously raised billions in funding from Microsoft, SoftBank, and Thrive Capital. The company was most recently valued at $500 billion.