Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Founder and CEO, speaks at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York City on Sept. 28, 2023.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Investor Brad Gerstner cautioned Monday that OpenAI’s deals with Nvidia and AMD are purely announcements, not deployments.
“Now we will see what gets delivered,” the Altimeter Capital founder told CNBC. “Ultimately, the best chips will win.”
OpenAI’s megadeal with AMD and its relentless push to expand artificial intelligence capabilities underscores the intensifying competitive landscape.
Gerstner said the deals provide “more evidence that the world will remain compute-constrained despite best efforts to bring massive supply online.”
Experts say it’s also another validation of the AI arms race heating up, with AI a key element in the geopolitical race between the U.S. and China.
OpenAI’s Chinese rival DeepSeek sent shockwaves last year when it claimed to have a lower-cost AI model than its U.S. peer. And Deepseek has continued to innovate, delivering new open-sourced models using domestically made AI chips.
Last week, the U.S. government issued a report warning of DeepSeek’s national security concerns, Axios reported.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation said DeepSeek provides Chinese Communist Party views more frequently than U.S. models, according to Axios.
OpenAI’s partnership with AMD is raising hopes that it is taking the right steps to increase production and build more complex AI models.
“What we’re really seeing is a world where there’s going to be absolute compute scarcity, because there’s going to be so much demand for AI services, and not just from OpenAI, really from the whole ecosystem,” OpenAI President told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Monday. “And so that’s why it’s just so important for this whole industry to come together.”
