Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the idea of a $100 billion investment in OpenAI is likely off the table.
Huang said at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco on Wednesday that such a massive investment in the ChatGPT maker is “probably not in the cards,” adding that “they’re going to go public towards the end of the year.”
“Just for everybody’s update, we finalized our agreement. We’re going to invest $30 billion in OpenAl,” Huang said.
“This might be the last time we’ll have the opportunity to invest in a consequential company like this,” he added.
Last year, Nvidia said it could invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a partnership to build out AI infrastructure. The deal would see the companies construct “at least 10 gigawatts” of AI data centers powered by Nvidia systems.
Huang said on Wednesday that Nvidia will focus on supplying the massive computing power OpenAI needs to train and run its AI models.
“The revenues will more than follow,” he added.
He also said that Nvidia’s $10 billion investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic “probably will be the last as well.”
Anthropic, the maker of Claude, is preparing to go public, and investor demand for its shares is rising, Joseph Alagna, founding partner of Buttonwood Funds, one of Anthropic’s largest shareholders, told Business Insider last month.
Huang’s comments follow speculation last month that there were potential tensions over the multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal reported that some Nvidia executives had raised internal concerns about the deal, citing people familiar with the matter.
Speaking to reporters in Taipei in February, Huang dismissed the suggestion that he was unhappy with OpenAI, calling it “nonsense.” He added that he strongly supports the startup’s work and Altman’s leadership.
“I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible,” Huang said, adding that Nvidia would “invest a great deal of money, probably the largest investment we’ve ever made.”
Huang has also said in an interview on CNBC’s “Mad Money” last month that he would welcome the chance to invest in a future OpenAI IPO.
OpenAI is among the world’s most valuable privately held AI companies and a key customer for Nvidia’s chips, which are used to train and run large language models.
The company has not publicly said it plans to go public, but the scale of the capital and computing power needed to develop advanced AI systems has prompted speculation about how it will fund its next phase of expansion.
In a January exchange on Substack, “Big Short” investor Michael Burry said he was struck by how ChatGPT had “kicked off a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure race.”
“It’s like someone built a prototype robot and every business in the world started investing for a robot future,” he wrote.
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