Nvidia said on Monday it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, underscoring the scale of resources now being committed to artificial intelligence infrastructure as the industry braces for an unprecedented buildout of data centers.
The investment, which will be deployed in phases, is tied to OpenAI’s plans to construct facilities requiring 10 gigawatts of power—equivalent to between 4 million and 5 million GPUs, according to Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang.
“This is a giant project,” Huang said in an interview with CNBC alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company president Greg Brockman. He added that the capacity represents twice the number of GPUs shipped last year and roughly equal to what Nvidia expects to deliver globally in 2025.
The chipmaker’s first tranche of $10 billion will be unlocked when the first gigawatt of capacity is completed, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC. The investments will be made at then-current valuations, the person said. Nvidia shares rose nearly 4% on Monday following the announcement, adding about $170 billion in market value and bringing its capitalization to roughly $4.5 trillion.
The move deepens Nvidia’s already symbiotic relationship with OpenAI, whose 2022 launch of ChatGPT set off the latest AI boom and ignited surging demand for the company’s GPUs. Altman, who said OpenAI now has 700 million weekly active users, called the undertaking an “unprecedented infrastructure challenge” but insisted the company’s focus remains on “great AI research, making products people want, and building this infrastructure at scale.”
The deal cements Nvidia as OpenAI’s “preferred” supplier of chips and networking gear, further consolidating the company’s grip on the AI accelerator market, even as rivals like Advanced Micro Devices and hyperscale cloud providers develop alternatives. In August, Huang told investors that a single gigawatt of AI data center capacity can cost between $50 billion and $60 billion, with Nvidia chips and systems accounting for around $35 billion of that figure.
The first phase of the new OpenAI infrastructure, using Nvidia’s forthcoming Vera Rubin systems, is expected to come online in the second half of 2026. The partnership also builds on OpenAI’s existing relationships with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and the Stargate project, while complementing Microsoft’s Azure-based integration of OpenAI models into cloud services and Office applications.
The investment follows OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation in a recent secondary round, which included backing from Microsoft, Thrive Capital, and SoftBank. Altman referred to both Microsoft and Nvidia as “passive” investors but also described them as two of the company’s “most critical partners.”
For Nvidia, the $100 billion commitment eclipses its recent spending spree in the AI ecosystem. Just last week, the company disclosed a $5 billion stake in Intel tied to a collaboration on AI processors, nearly $700 million invested in U.K. data center startup Nscale, and more than $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and license the company’s technology.
Analysts say the scale of the OpenAI project dwarfs other AI infrastructure efforts underway. While cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are pouring billions into their own GPU clusters, none have matched a single commitment of this magnitude.
“Nvidia invests $100 billion in OpenAI, which then OpenAI turns back and gives it back to Nvidia,” said Bryn Talkington, managing partner at Requisite Capital Management. “I feel like this is going to be very virtuous for Jensen.”
Comparatively, other AI ventures appear modest: Amazon Web Services announced $15 billion in data center expansion in 2023, while Google pledged roughly $30 billion over several years. By contrast, the Nvidia–OpenAI project, with its 10-gigawatt ambition, underlines a scale that analysts say could reshape energy demand and global computing supply chains.
“This investment is additive to everything that’s been announced and contracted,” Huang said, stressing that it goes beyond Nvidia’s prior financial disclosures.
The sheer size of the deal positions Nvidia and OpenAI at the center of the infrastructure race—one that may increasingly define the future of the AI industry.
