wall street journalReportIt is alleged that NVIDIA announced its support for OpenAI in late September last year.Investment plans of up to $1000 billionThe project is currently stalled (On Ice). Originally intended to help OpenAI build a massive computing infrastructure, it is rumored that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang privately expressed doubts about the feasibility of the deal, and the two parties are currently renegotiating the form of cooperation, which may change from the original hardware leasing and construction to a pure equity investment.
Once touted as "the largest computing project in history," now all that's left is a memo?
Back in September of last year, NVIDIA and OpenAI announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at NVIDIA's headquarters in Santa Clara. The MOU included NVIDIA's commitment to help build at least 10 GW (megawatts) of computing power and to invest $100 billion in OpenAI, while OpenAI pledged to lease relevant AI chips. At the time, Jensen Huang called it "the largest computing project in history."
However, sources familiar with the matter revealed that the negotiations have made little progress in the past few months. Huang Jen-hsun recently emphasized to industry insiders that what was initially signed was only a "non-binding" memorandum, not a final agreement.
Jensen Huang's concerns: OpenAI is burning through cash too fast, and its competitors are too strong.
The main reason for the freeze in transactions stemmed from internal concerns within NVIDIA. The report indicated that Jensen Huang privately criticized OpenAI's business model as "lacking in discipline" and expressed concern about the competitive environment it faced.
• Google Gemini's comeback:Google's Gemini model has recently performed strongly, which has actually slowed down the overall user growth rate of ChatGPT.
• The threat of Anthropic:The popularity of Claude Code, a coding agent launched by competitor Anthropic, coupled with NVIDIA's own commitment to invest $10 billion in Anthropic last November, shows that NVIDIA is diversifying its bets.
• The direction of negotiations between the two parties has now shifted: NVIDIA may instead participate in OpenAI's current financing plan and make an equity investment of "hundreds of billions of dollars", rather than the original complex structure of building server rooms and lending money to buy chips (especially since OpenAI later purchased a large number of AMD chip products, which may have also caused dissatisfaction from NVIDIA).
The bombshell on the eve of the IPO
This is for the positive planIPO by the end of 2026 This is clearly a major blow to OpenAI, which is preparing for its IPO. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been actively signing various high-value computing power contracts over the past year (reportedly totaling $1.4 trillion) to secure future expansion momentum. Coupled with recent reports of SoftBank increasing its investment, potentially pushing its market valuation to $8300 billion, the shift towards a more conservative stance from NVIDIA, its largest investor, presents OpenAI with its biggest challenge before its IPO: how to fill this massive computing power funding gap.
