Nvidia's Jensen Huang: Investment in OpenAI is progressing as planned, and will participate in all of its future funding rounds

IT Home February 4 News, recent reports have suggested that tensions are emerging between NVIDIA and OpenAI, but NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that the investment plans with OpenAI are still proceeding as scheduled.

On Tuesday, local time, Jensen Huang told CNBC host Jim Cramer, “There are no dramatic events; everything is on track.”

Last September, Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman jointly announced a letter of intent: NVIDIA would invest up to $100 billion (IT Home note: approximately 695.193 billion RMB at current exchange rates) in this artificial intelligence laboratory in installments. OpenAI would build AI infrastructure based on NVIDIA’s technology, with the project’s power demand potentially reaching 10 billion watts.

However, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in November showed that the deal had not yet been finalized. In the following months, there was increasing concern that the announcement of this investment was merely a PR stunt. Last weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal had been temporarily put on hold.

NVIDIA’s stock price dropped over 3.4% on that day, leading the tech sector lower, falling 13% from its all-time high in October.

Jensen Huang revealed on Tuesday that NVIDIA will participate in OpenAI’s next funding round, which he described as “the largest private funding round in history.” According to CNBC last month, OpenAI is preparing for a new round of funding, potentially raising up to $100 billion (current exchange rate approximately 695.193 billion RMB).

“We will participate in the next round of funding,” Huang said, “there’s no doubt about that.” He also mentioned that NVIDIA is considering investing in all future funding rounds of OpenAI and hopes to participate in OpenAI’s eventual initial public offering (IPO).

According to Bloomberg, sources familiar with the matter said that NVIDIA is close to reaching an agreement to invest $20 billion (current exchange rate approximately 139.039 billion RMB) as part of its latest funding round. This would be NVIDIA’s largest single investment in OpenAI. The sources noted that the deal has not been finalized and the terms could still change.

Since its founding, OpenAI has been using NVIDIA’s graphics processing units (GPUs) to build and run its AI models.

However, in recent months, Altman has repeatedly stated that OpenAI’s chip reserves are insufficient to meet the market demand for products like ChatGPT, and increasing computing power will drive revenue growth. To this end, OpenAI has successively partnered with competitors of NVIDIA for chip supply, including AMD, Broadcom, and Cerebras.

On Monday, local time, Altman posted on X (formerly Twitter) in response to rumors about the company’s relationship with NVIDIA. He wrote, “We are very happy to work with NVIDIA; they have built world-class AI chips. We hope to be a major long-term customer of NVIDIA. I really don’t understand where these baseless rumors are coming from.”