Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was recently said to have expressed a negative view to industry officials about a $100 billion (about 145 trillion won) investment partnership with OpenAI. This has led to interpretations that the two companies' partnership could fall through.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing multiple sources, reported on the 30th (local time) that Nvidia's plan to invest in OpenAI is on hold. It is due to growing skepticism within Nvidia, including from CEO Huang, about investing in OpenAI. Huang was said to have told those around him that OpenAI's business approach lacks discipline and that he is concerned it faces competition from Google and Anthropic.
Nvidia is said to be reviewing the partnership it signed with OpenAI in September last year. One option being discussed is to invest only tens of billions of dollars by joining the investment round OpenAI is conducting.
OpenAI planned to use Nvidia's investment funds to build a 10 GW (gigawatt) artificial intelligence (AI) data center and, in the process, purchase chips such as Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs). The two companies also signed a letter of intent for the transaction at the time, but there has reportedly been no progress on the matter since.
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said at a conference in early December last year, about two months after the investment announcement, that the infrastructure investment contract with OpenAI had not yet been finalized. In its earnings report last November, Nvidia also said there was no guarantee that an investment in OpenAI would be confirmed.
OpenAI has recently been expanding its cooperation with AMD, a Nvidia competitor. It signed a multi-year contract to supply AI chips and received an option to acquire 10% equity in AMD. At the same time, it is also co-developing its own chips with U.S. semiconductor corporations Broadcom.
An OpenAI Spokesperson told the WSJ, "The two companies are actively discussing the details of the partnership," adding, "Nvidia's technology has supported our innovation from the beginning, is a core driver of our current systems, and will play a pivotal role in future expansion." A Nvidia Spokesperson also said, "We have been a major partner of OpenAI for the past 10 years," and added, "We look forward to continuing to work together."