Nvidia to back OpenAI with staged $100 billion investment

Nvidia just put real money behind its favorite metaphor. After two years of calling modern data centers “AI factories,” the chipmaker is going all-in with chips — and cash — to help build them. Today, Nvidia and OpenAI announced that the chipmaker plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI through a staged partnership that doesn’t just guarantee the startup first dibs on the world’s most coveted GPUs — it effectively makes Nvidia a co-builder of the infrastructure that will power the next wave of artificial intelligence.

Nvidia will pour in money gigawatt by gigawatt as OpenAI builds data centers stocked with millions of its chips. The first of those, running on Nvidia’s coming Vera Rubin platform, is slated to switch on in the second half of 2026. By the time the build-out hits 10 gigawatts — about the output of several nuclear reactors — OpenAI will be operating the kind of compute grid that is usually reserved for national utilities.

The deal is part supplier agreement, part financing package — and has a moat big enough to make rivals sweat.

This isn’t a one-time wire; it’s a letter-of-intent to invest progressively as each gigawatt is deployed — money that shows up when concrete, power, racks, and GPUs do. In return, OpenAI names Nvidia its preferred strategic compute and networking partner, aligning hardware and software roadmaps so that model releases and silicon arrive in lockstep.