Nvidia Corp’s negotiations to invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI have broken down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, exposing a potential rift between two of the most powerful companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
The discussions stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed concerns about the transaction, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the deliberations.
OpenAI makes the popular chatbot ChatGPT, while Nvidia dominates the market for AI processors that help develop such software.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The companies announced the agreement in September last year, saying at the time that they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic deal.
The US$100 billion was meant to support new data centers and other AI infrastructure, built with Nvidia components.
“We have been OpenAI’s preferred partner for the last 10 years,” Nvidia said in a statement to Bloomberg News on Friday. “We look forward to continuing to work together.”
The company did not discuss the state of negotiations.
A representative for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sides are now rethinking the partnership, the WSJ said.
In one scenario, Nvidia might invest tens of billions of dollars as part of OpenAI’s current funding round, the newspaper reported.
OpenAI has been seeking to raise as much as US$100 billion in that round.
Amazon.com Inc. is in talks to invest as much as US$50 billion and expand an agreement that involves selling computer power to the AI start-up, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
Nvidia has made other high-profile investments in AI companies. Earlier this week, it announced plans to put an additional US$2 billion into CoreWeave Inc, a cloud computing provider that is also a customer.
These sorts of circular deals — where a company invests in a business that buys its product — have fueled concern about the sustainability of the AI boom.
Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) has brushed off the criticism.
After the CoreWeave deal, Huang said that such investments represent a small portion of the total amount that companies will need to raise.
“So the idea that it is circular is — it’s ridiculous,” he said.
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