NVIDIA Plans $100B OpenAI Investment, 10GW AI Centers

On September 22, NVIDIA and OpenAI announced a landmark partnership that includes building massive AI data centers and a potential investment of up to $100 billion from NVIDIA into OpenAI.

The news sent NVIDIA's stock soaring over 4% on Monday, pushing its market value close to $4.5 trillion — a fresh all-time high.

Under the agreement, OpenAI will deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA-powered data centers to train and run its next-generation models. To put that into perspective, this energy demand is equivalent to powering around 8 million U.S. households.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang explained that 10 gigawatts translates to roughly 4–5 million GPUs, essentially the company's entire annual shipment and nearly double last year's output. "This is an enormous project," Huang said during a joint interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman.

According to insiders, the first $10 billion investment will be triggered once the initial 1-gigawatt data center is operational. Additional funding will follow as each gigawatt facility comes online, with the first phase expected to launch in late 2026 on NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform.

This collaboration complements both companies' existing ties with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and the ambitious "Stargate" project. Altman noted that NVIDIA and Microsoft remain "passive investors" but are also among OpenAI's most critical partners. Huang emphasized that this new commitment is over and above all previously announced agreements and exceeds Wall Street's financial expectations for NVIDIA.

Before this announcement, OpenAI's valuation had already reached $500 billion in a recent secondary market transaction. Microsoft remains a key strategic backer, having integrated OpenAI's models into Azure and Microsoft Office. Other investors include SoftBank Group and Thrive Capital.

The move also highlights NVIDIA's accelerating investment activity across the semiconductor and AI ecosystem. Just last week, the company committed $5 billion to Intel for joint chip development and invested another $700 million into UK-based data center startup Nscale.