Almost simultaneously with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressing his surprise at OpenAI’s multi-billion dollar agreement with rival AMD—just after Nvidia committed up to $100 billion in investment to the AI company—Sam Altman revealed that more partnerships of this kind are on the horizon.
Huang appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. When questioned about whether he was aware of the AMD partnership before it was made public, he replied, “Not really.”
As previously reported by TechCrunch, OpenAI’s arrangement with AMD is out of the ordinary. AMD has agreed to provide OpenAI with significant portions of its stock—potentially up to 10% over several years, depending on factors like stock performance. In return, OpenAI will both utilize and contribute to the development of AMD’s next-generation AI GPUs. This effectively makes OpenAI a stakeholder in AMD.
Nvidia’s agreement is structured in the opposite way. Nvidia has put money into the AI startup, thereby becoming a shareholder in OpenAI.
Although OpenAI has long relied on Nvidia hardware via cloud services such as Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI, and CoreWeave, “This marks the first occasion we’ll be selling directly to them,” Huang stated. He also mentioned that Nvidia will continue to supply hardware to cloud providers as well.
These direct transactions, which include not only GPUs but also systems and networking equipment, are designed to “get OpenAI ready” for the day it operates as its own “self-hosted hyperscaler,” Huang said—in other words, when it runs its own data centers.
However, Huang acknowledged that OpenAI currently lacks the funds to purchase all of this equipment. He estimated that each gigawatt of AI data center capacity would cost OpenAI between “$50 to $60 billion,” covering everything from land and electricity to servers and infrastructure.
To date, for 2025, OpenAI has arranged for 10 gigawatts of U.S. facilities through its $500 billion Stargate agreement with Oracle and SoftBank. (Additionally, there is a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle.)
The Nvidia partnership covers at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers, while the AMD deal accounts for 6 gigawatts. The “Stargate UK” initiative involves expanding data centers in the United Kingdom, and OpenAI has made further commitments across Europe. Some estimates suggest OpenAI has signed deals worth $1 trillion this year alone.
Bloomberg has reported that, like the AMD deal, Nvidia’s arrangement has faced criticism for being “circular.” Detractors argue that Nvidia is essentially financing OpenAI’s purchases and, in return, receiving shares in the AI company.
Altman’s message: More deals are coming
While Huang was discussing OpenAI’s infrastructure requirements on CNBC, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was released on Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Podcast.
During the podcast, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz told Altman he was “very impressed by deal structure improvement,” referring to these latest agreements. As an OpenAI investor, it would be surprising if he felt otherwise. OpenAI has managed to secure billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, often funded by others. And it’s done so repeatedly.
When asked about these recent partnerships, Altman responded, “You should expect much more from us in the coming months.”
Altman believes that OpenAI’s future models and upcoming products will be so advanced and in such high demand that “we have decided it’s time to make a very bold infrastructure investment,” he said.
The challenge is that OpenAI’s current revenue is far from $1 trillion, though it is reportedly growing quickly, reaching $4.5 billion in the first half of 2025.
Still, Altman is clearly confident that these investments will eventually be justified. “I’ve never felt more certain about our research direction and the economic value that will result from deploying these [future] models.”
However, he noted, OpenAI cannot achieve this economic potential alone.
“To make a commitment of this magnitude, we really need the support of the entire industry, or at least a significant portion of it. This involves everything from the basic infrastructure to model distribution and all the steps in between, which is substantial. So we’ll be collaborating with many partners,” Altman said, indicating more deals are on the way.
So stay tuned, tech sector. OpenAI’s deal-making spree is far from over.
