Nvidia Nears $20 Billion Investment in OpenAI Amid Hardware Shifts

Nvidia Corporation is nearing a $20 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a funding round targeting $100 billion, which could value the AI startup at approximately $830 billion. The deal follows the stalling of a previous September 2025 plan for a $100 billion investment. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed reports of tension between the companies as "nonsense," clarifying that the earlier $100 billion figure was a non-binding letter of intent and "never a commitment."

Despite the investment, reports indicate OpenAI has sought alternative hardware from AMD, Cerebras, and Groq due to dissatisfaction with the inference speeds of Nvidia's latest chips, specifically for software development tasks in its Codex product. Nvidia countered these moves by securing a $20 billion licensing deal with Groq. Meanwhile, Nvidia has diversified its own interests, including a $10 billion commitment to OpenAI competitor Anthropic.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and head of compute infrastructure Sachin Katti have publicly defended the partnership, with Altman calling Nvidia's chips the "best AI chips in the world" and expressing a desire to remain a "gigantic customer for a very long time." Katti described the relationship as a "foundational" co-design partnership, noting that OpenAI's entire compute fleet currently runs on Nvidia GPUs. The investment comes as OpenAI prepares for a potential initial public offering that could value the company at $1 trillion.