SAN FRANCISCO, February 4, 2026, 09:12 PST
- Nvidia is nearing a deal to invest about $20 billion in OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- OpenAI is seeking up to $100 billion in fresh funding, with reports putting its valuation around $830 billion.
- OpenAI has also been testing alternatives to some Nvidia chips for AI “inference,” even as both sides play down tensions.
Nvidia is nearing a deal to invest roughly $20 billion in OpenAI as part of the ChatGPT maker’s latest funding round, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. OpenAI is looking to raise up to $100 billion in the round, valuing it at about $830 billion, Reuters has reported, and the talks are not final.
Bloomberg reported Nvidia’s contribution is close to being completed and would be the chipmaker’s single biggest investment in the ChatGPT developer, though the terms could still change. In a funding round — a private fundraising where investors buy a stake — that size matters because it signals how much cash the AI build-out is still pulling in.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC the company “will invest in the next round,” calling it the “largest private round ever raised in history”. He also said Nvidia would consider investing in a future IPO — an initial public offering, when a firm sells shares to the public. Reuters
Big Tech firms including Amazon and investors such as SoftBank are also jockeying for closer ties with OpenAI, betting that access and partnership matter as the AI race hardens. Nvidia’s move would deepen a relationship where it already sells the core chips many AI firms depend on.
Huang has pushed back on talk of strain with OpenAI boss Sam Altman. He said there was “no drama” and that “the first deal is on,” and Altman wrote on X that Nvidia makes “the best AI chips in the world” and that OpenAI hopes to remain a “gigantic customer for a very long time.” Business Insider
Still, Reuters reported earlier this week that OpenAI has been unhappy with some of Nvidia’s latest chips and has looked at alternatives since last year, focusing on “inference” — when a trained model answers a user’s prompt, rather than learning from new data. Nvidia said customers “continue to choose NVIDIA for inference because we deliver the best performance and total cost of ownership at scale.” Reuters
That hunt for options has lifted attention on smaller chip players. Cerebras Systems, which competes with Nvidia and AMD, said on Wednesday it raised $1 billion in a late-stage round valuing it at $23 billion, as AI buyers try to diversify supply.
AMD, Nvidia’s main U.S. chip rival, has also been trying to wedge itself deeper into OpenAI’s supply chain. CEO Lisa Su told investors: “I do not believe that we will be supply-limited in terms of the ramp that we put in place.” Reuters
But the OpenAI-Nvidia investment talks have already stretched out, and a deal of this size can wobble on terms, timing and the startup’s shifting chip needs. If OpenAI leans harder into non-Nvidia hardware for inference, the relationship could get more transactional, less cozy.
For now, the market will watch two things: whether Nvidia’s $20 billion commitment actually closes, and whether OpenAI can land anything close to a $100 billion round at the valuation being floated. The next signposts may come in chip orders and contracts, not press statements.
