Chip maker Nvidia will invest up to US$100-billion in OpenAI, marking a tie-up between two of the highest-profile leaders in the global artificial intelligence race.

Companies worldwide are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into securing and expanding capacity for powerful cloud computing required to develop and power complex AI technology.

The two companies signed a letter of intent for a landmark strategic partnership to deploy at least 10GW of Nvidia chips for OpenAI’s AI infrastructure. They aim to finalise partnership details in the coming weeks, with the first deployment phase targeted to come online in the second half of 2026.

“Everything starts with compute,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement. “Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilise what we’re building with Nvidia to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale.”

Nvidia shares were up 3% while shares of Oracle , which partners with OpenAI, SoftBank and Microsoft on the $500-billion Stargate AI data centre project, gained nearly 5%.

Nvidia’s investment comes days after it committed $5-billion to struggling chip maker Intel.

OpenAI and its backer Microsoft also announced earlier this month that they have signed a non-binding deal for new relationship terms that would allow for OpenAI’s restructuring into a for-profit company.

Antitrust scrutiny

Nvidia also backed OpenAI in a $6.6-billion funding round in October 2024. The world’s most valuable firm making another sizeable investment in OpenAI could lead to antitrust scrutiny.

The Donald Trump administration has taken a much lighter touch on competition issues compared to former US President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers.

Read: Huawei declares open battle with Nvidia in AI chip race

In June 2024 the US justice department and the Federal Trade Commission reached a deal that cleared the way for potential antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the AI industry. — Arsheeya Bajwa, (c) 2025 Reuters

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