Nvidia to make “huge” investment in OpenAI as $100 billion plan faces questions

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Saturday that the company is planning a "huge" investment in OpenAI, describing it as potentially “the largest investment [Nvidia] ever made.”

In September, the company announced a nonbinding plan to invest up ‌to $100 billion in OpenAI to support new artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and allow it to build data centers equipped with Nvidia’s advanced chips.

But on January 31st, The Wall Street Journal said that the plans appeared to have stalled, citing people within Nvidia who had expressed doubt about the deal. People familiar with the matter also shared with the WSJ that Huang has privately emphasized that the original $100 billion agreement was nonbinding and not finalized, and raised concerns about OpenAI’s business discipline and competition from the likes of Google and Anthropic.

When asked about the report during a visit to Taipei on Saturday, Huang dismissed it as “nonsense.”

“We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters, according to Bloomberg. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.”

Huang didn’t clarify how much the company would contribute, but described the investment as “huge”, although when asked whether it would be over $100 billion, he said: “No, no, nothing like that.”

“Our teams are actively working through details of our partnership. NVIDIA technology has underpinned our breakthroughs from the start, powers our systems today, and will remain central as we scale what comes next,” an OpenAI spokesman told the WSJ in response to the report.

An Nvidia spokeswoman also said that the company has been OpenAI’s preferred partner for the past 10 years.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has been seeking to raise $100 billion in its current funding round, with Amazon in talks to invest as much as $50 billion and expand its agreement focused on selling computer power.