Nvidia is about to finalize a $30 billion investment in OpenAI, which will replace the $100 billion long-term cooperation commitment finalized by the two parties last year and is also part of a new round of large-scale financing for the artificial intelligence startup. According to people familiar with the matter, the world's most valuable company is in the final stages of negotiations with OpenAI, and the investment may be completed as early as this weekend.
The person said that this US$30 billion equity investment is part of a large round of financing for OpenAI, and the total financing is expected to exceed US$100 billion; excluding this new financing, the valuation of the ChatGPT R&D company will reach US$730 billion.
People familiar with the matter added that OpenAI will reinvest most of the new financing into Nvidia's hardware purchases, but the two parties will not advance the multi-year $100 billion investment cooperation agreement announced in September last year.
This agreement, which was officially announced with a high profile in September, is now on hold. Behind this is investors' concerns about the development prospects of the artificial intelligence industry. Affected by this, U.S. technology stocks have fallen by 17% since the beginning of this year.
This "letter of intent" agreement announced last year deeply tied the two companies at the forefront of the artificial intelligence industry, and also pushed Nvidia's market value to exceed US$5 trillion in a few weeks.
The agreement also ushered in an intensive cooperation signing period for the artificial intelligence start-up headed by Sam Altman. It not only reached complex cooperation agreements with rival chip manufacturers Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Broadcom, but also established cooperative relationships with cloud service providers such as Oracle.
Although these agreements were recognized by stock market investors at the time, a series of binding cooperation among suppliers, customers and investors in the field of artificial intelligence also caused concerns among some analysts. They believed that such cooperation had circular structure problems and that the industry was creating a growing bubble.
According to the terms of the $100 billion agreement, in the next few years, as OpenAI's demand for computing power continues to grow, Nvidia will inject capital into it in ten installments of $10 billion each in exchange for a large stake in the artificial intelligence startup.
As part of its plan to deploy up to 10 gigawatts of new computing power, OpenAI also planned to purchase millions of NVIDIA artificial intelligence chips.
However, this agreement has always remained at the memorandum of understanding stage and has not been officially implemented. There were reports in January this year that the agreement had been "on hold" and will now be replaced by a more direct cooperation - Nvidia will invest up to $30 billion in exchange for equity in OpenAI.
People familiar with the matter said that this financing will provide financial support for the construction of billions of watts of new computing power for OpenAI, and the two parties may reach more cooperation agreements in the future.
OpenAI and Nvidia declined to comment.
Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have been trying to refute rumors that their corporate relationship has cooled. Altman posted on the X platform earlier this month: "We are happy to cooperate with NVIDIA. They have created the world's top artificial intelligence chips. We hope to become its super-large customer in the long term."
The next day, the head of Nvidia said in an interview that any suggestion that the two parties had "conflicts" was "nonsense" and said bluntly: "We are very happy to cooperate with OpenAI."
The San Francisco-based start-up is also in the final stages of negotiations with SoftBank, which will also inject $30 billion in capital, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon is also expected to invest up to $50 billion, and this investment is also part of a broader cooperation between the two parties that includes Amazon's use of the OpenAI model.
The person added that Abu Dhabi's state-owned technology investment fund MGX and Microsoft are also expected to inject billions of dollars into OpenAI; at the same time, OpenAI's management is meeting with venture capital institutions and other investors this week to further attract investment interest for a new round of financing.
People familiar with the matter said that during these meetings, OpenAI disclosed to investors that it planned to invest approximately US$600 billion in the procurement of computing resources by 2030, with partners including Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft.
OpenAI believes that possessing sufficient computing power resources is the best way to fend off competitors; the company is also working hard to lock in more infrastructure and power supply resources to meet the nearly unlimited demand for artificial intelligence tools predicted by management.