SAN FRANCISCO, March 10, 2026, 07:13 PDT
- Nvidia has disclosed a major stake in Thinking Machines Lab, agreeing to deliver a minimum of one gigawatt of Vera Rubin systems through a multiyear agreement.
- Nvidia is aiming to roll out deployment early next year, using its upcoming Vera Rubin platform.
- Nvidia shares hovered near flat in early U.S. trading Tuesday.
Nvidia on Tuesday announced a major investment in Thinking Machines Lab, the startup launched by ex-OpenAI exec Mira Murati, and locked in a multiyear deal to deliver no less than one gigawatt’s worth of its upcoming Vera Rubin systems. Both sides kept the financial details under wraps.
Nvidia lands another marquee customer for Vera Rubin, its upcoming AI chip platform, right on the eve of the March 16-19 GTC developer conference in San Jose. This move also pushes Nvidia further along its playbook of funding startups that ultimately become buyers of its own hardware—a tactic now drawing sharper investor scrutiny as AI budgets balloon.
Thinking Machines aims to roll out deployment by early next year. According to Reuters, industry executives put the price tag for one gigawatt of compute at roughly $50 billion — with that much power roughly equaling what 750,000 U.S. homes use in electricity.
Chief Executive Jensen Huang, in a company post, credited Thinking Machines with assembling a “world-class team.” Murati called Nvidia’s technology “the foundation” of the field, adding that teaming up should accelerate the startup’s expansion. NVIDIA Blog
According to a Reuters report from July, the startup—founded last year—secured roughly $2 billion in seed funding with a $12 billion valuation. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that multiple senior staffers, among them co-founder Barret Zoph, had gone back to OpenAI.
The landscape around Nvidia keeps shifting. Last month, AMD struck a deal to supply Meta as much as $60 billion in AI chips over five years. Broadcom, for its part, expects its custom AI chip business aimed at individual clients might break $100 billion next year.
Nvidia still sets the tone for the market. Shares barely budged in early U.S. trading Tuesday. Jacob Bourne, an eMarketer analyst, flagged after last month’s earnings that “the competitive picture is also shifting”—Meta is spreading orders to AMD, while major cloud players are ramping up chip production in-house. Reuters
Nvidia faces that risk. Backing OpenAI, Anthropic, and, more recently, Thinking Machines may secure steady demand for its chips—though it stirs up fresh worries about money just cycling between partners and doubts over how fast the AI boom will actually pay off.
So far, demand remains strong. Nvidia projected fiscal first-quarter revenue of $78 billion last month, topping analysts’ expectations. CEO Jensen Huang pointed to a persistent AI infrastructure boom, saying it “is not going to go back.” The market’s next signal arrives at GTC next week. Reuters
