NVIDIA and OpenAI today revealed plans for a massive strategic partnership that could reshape the future of artificial intelligence. The companies signed a letter of intent to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems, forming the backbone of OpenAI’s next-generation infrastructure. This hardware will power future model training and deployment as the company pursues superintelligence.
To make this happen, NVIDIA intends to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, with the rollout starting in the second half of 2026. The first phase will use NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform, a system designed to handle extreme-scale AI workloads.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang framed the deal as the natural next step. He noted that NVIDIA and OpenAI have been pushing each other since the early days of the DGX supercomputer, culminating in ChatGPT’s success. According to Huang, this new partnership represents a leap forward to deploy 10GW of compute power to fuel the next era of intelligence.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, echoed that sentiment, calling compute “the basis for the economy of the future.” He said the new infrastructure will allow OpenAI to continue creating new AI breakthroughs while also scaling them to people and businesses worldwide. OpenAI president Greg Brockman emphasized the company’s history with NVIDIA platforms and expressed excitement about deploying 10GW of compute to “push back the frontier of intelligence.”
The collaboration goes beyond hardware. NVIDIA will be OpenAI’s preferred strategic compute and networking partner, and the two organizations plan to co-optimize their roadmaps. That means aligning OpenAI’s model and infrastructure software with NVIDIA’s chips, networking, and system software.
This effort builds on work both companies are already doing alongside partners such as Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and the Stargate initiative, which is focused on building the most advanced AI infrastructure in the world.
OpenAI claims over 700 million weekly active users today, with adoption across enterprises, small businesses, and developers. The company argues that this deal will help it continue its mission to build artificial general intelligence that benefits humanity.
NVIDIA and OpenAI expect to finalize the details of the partnership in the coming weeks. If completed, this would be one of the largest single infrastructure investments in AI history, raising questions about power consumption, environmental impact, and the risks of concentrating compute resources in the hands of just a few players.
