Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 3.41% ) is reportedly close to putting $20 billion into OpenAI’s massive new funding round, a move that would make the chipmaker one of the AI startup’s largest backers. The deal, reported by Bloomberg, would value Nvidia’s stake at more than its entire portfolio of publicly traded equity holdings.
For two companies that just traded public jabs, this would be a very public reconciliation.
From Tension to Tight Ties
The investment would come after a brief but noticeable spat. Reports recently suggested Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had privately criticized OpenAI’s business discipline, while sources said OpenAI was exploring alternatives to Nvidia’s chips for certain workloads.
Now, Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 3.41% ) appears ready to double down financially. The funding round is said to total around $100 billion, with Amazon $AMZN ( ▼ 2.36% ) and SoftBank $SFTBY ( ▲ 0.3% ) also expected to commit even larger sums.
If confirmed, the deal would tie Nvidia even more closely to one of its most important customers in the AI boom.
Strategic Bet on the AI Stack
Nvidia already dominates the market for AI training hardware, and OpenAI is one of the largest buyers of advanced chips for both training and inference. A direct equity stake adds another layer to that relationship, giving Nvidia more exposure to the upside of AI applications, not just the hardware powering them.
At the same time, it could help keep OpenAI aligned with Nvidia’s ecosystem even as the startup experiments with other chip suppliers.
Big Money, Bigger Implications
A $20 billion check would be enormous even by Big Tech standards and highlights just how central OpenAI has become in the AI arms race. For Nvidia $NVDA, it is a bet that the long-term value of owning a piece of the AI software layer could rival, or even exceed, its current hardware dominance.
For now, what looked like a cooling relationship may be turning into one of the most important strategic partnerships in tech.