A global Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) player, OpenAI, has formed a multi-year partnership with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to deploy up to 6 gigawatts’ worth of AMD’s latest AI GPUs, making it one of the largest AI chip supply deals. It also poses a significant challenge to NVIDIA’s dominance in the AI hardware market.
The agreement will commence with a 1-gigawatt deployment of AMD Instinct MI450 GPUs starting in the second half of 2026, ramping up over several years through successive hardware generations.
The deal also makes headlines for its unique financial arrangement: OpenAI is being granted the option to acquire up to a 10% ownership stake in AMD as it hits successive milestones in GPU deployment, a move that tightly aligns the companies’ long-term interests.
Industry analysts estimate that the agreement could generate tens of billions in annual revenue for AMD, triggering a 34% surge in its shares and adding nearly $80 billion to its market capitalization on the day of the announcement.
For OpenAI, the partnership is a strategic pivot to diversify its supplier base and address the bottleneck of chip supply that has affected the AI sector globally. Until now, NVIDIA chips have powered the training and deployment of massive models like ChatGPT.
“The world needs much more compute,” commented OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, signaling that OpenAI will continue to source from Nvidia but requires vastly more hardware as it builds the next generation of AI infrastructure. AMD’s entry will add vital capacity and competition, accelerate OpenAI’s data center buildout, and cement AMD’s credibility in high-performance AI compute.
“We are thrilled to partner with OpenAI to deliver AI compute at massive scale. This partnership brings the best of AMD and OpenAI together to create a true win-win, enabling the world’s most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem,” said Lisa Su, CEO of AMD in a press note.
This agreement comes just weeks after OpenAI revealed a separate $100 billion arrangement with NVIDIA, underscoring the sheer magnitude of investment required as AI adoption continues to grow across geographies. Globally, demand for AI chips continues to outstrip supply, with some industry forecasts projecting over $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending by leading firms over the next several years.
For OpenAI, AMD’s custom chips will underpin both the training and deployment of its future models in growing data centers, potentially reshaping the power dynamics of the semiconductor industry. For AMD, the partnership is not just a commercial coup, it is a strategic validation of its ongoing efforts to close the gap with Nvidia in the highly lucrative AI sector. As the “AI race” shows no signs of slowing down, hardware alliances of this scale are likely to shape the future of the industry.
