Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that he’s surprised Advanced Micro Devices offered 10% of itself to OpenAI as part of a multibillion-dollar partnership announced earlier this week.
“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next generation product,” Huang said in an interview with “CNBC’s Squawk Box.” “I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”
OpenAI and AMD reached a deal on Monday, with OpenAI committing to purchase 6 gigawatts worth of AMD chips over multiple years, including its forthcoming MI450 series. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, with vesting milestones based on deployment volume and AMD’s share price.
If OpenAI exercises the full warrant, the company could acquire roughly 10% ownership in AMD.
The deal challenges Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip industry, a market where AMD has sought to catch up, alongside cloud providers which are developing their own chips.
Nvidia late last month announced it planned to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI over the next decade. OpenAI agreed to build and deploy Nvidia systems that require 10 gigawatts of power, which Huang said at the time of the announcement is equal to between 4 million and 5 million graphics processing units (GPUs).
Huang said the investment is “very different” from OpenAI’s deal with AMD in that it allows Nvidia to sell directly to the ChatGPT creator.
Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI has underscored concerns about the “circular nature” of some AI infrastructure deals.
Asked how OpenAI will fund the deal with Nvidia, Huang said, “they don’t have the money yet.”
“They’re going to have to raise that money through, first of all, their revenues, which is growing exponentially, equity or debt,” Huang said. “They gave us the opportunity to invest alongside other investors when the time comes.”
Huang added that after Nvidia previously invested in OpenAI, his “only regret is that we didn’t invest more.”
