San Francisco — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday he was “surprised” by rival AMD’s decision to offer 10% of its equity to OpenAI as part of their newly announced multibillion-dollar partnership — calling the deal both “clever” and “unexpected.”
Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Huang praised the creativity of the move but questioned the timing.
“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next-generation product,” Huang said. “I’m surprised they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”
Inside the AMD–OpenAI Deal
The AMD–OpenAI partnership, announced Monday, commits OpenAI to purchase 6 gigawatts of AMD chips over multiple years — including the upcoming MI450 series, designed to compete with Nvidia’s high-performance GPUs.
As part of the agreement, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, with vesting milestones tied to chip deployment volumes and AMD’s stock performance.
If OpenAI fully exercises the warrants, it would own roughly 10% of AMD, a stake worth tens of billions of dollars at current valuations.
The market reaction has been explosive. AMD’s shares have jumped 43% this week, including an 11% rise on Wednesday, while Nvidia shares climbed 2% after Huang’s remarks.
Analysts say the deal could reshape the competitive landscape of AI chip manufacturing, posing the strongest challenge yet to Nvidia’s dominance.
Nvidia’s $100 Billion Bet on OpenAI
Nvidia has its own deep ties to OpenAI. The chipmaker announced in late September that it plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI over the next decade — a commitment that will include supplying 10 gigawatts of GPU power, equivalent to 4–5 million graphics processors.
Huang emphasized that Nvidia’s deal structure is “very different” from AMD’s.
“Our investment allows us to sell directly to OpenAI,” he said. “Theirs is more like an equity partnership.”
He added that Nvidia’s investment has already proven profitable and strategically important to the broader AI ecosystem.
The AI Hardware Race and Financial Reality
Huang acknowledged that OpenAI’s ambitious hardware commitments raise questions about how the company will finance them.
“They don’t have the money yet,” he said. “They’re going to have to raise that money through revenues, equity, or debt. They gave us the opportunity to invest alongside other investors when the time comes.”
Despite the costs, Huang said he remains bullish on OpenAI’s growth trajectory and wished Nvidia had invested even more in the ChatGPT maker earlier.
Nvidia Expands Its AI Ecosystem
Beyond OpenAI, Huang confirmed Nvidia’s participation in Elon Musk’s xAI funding round, where the startup is reportedly seeking $20 billion. Nvidia will invest $2 billion, according to Bloomberg.
“Almost everything that Elon is part of, you really want to be part of as well,” Huang said.
He also cited CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed AI data center operator, as one of several “terrific investments” contributing to the global AI infrastructure boom.
“These are really special companies,” Huang said. “They’re part of our ecosystem building out the AI infrastructure for the world.”
