OpenAI signs huge chip deal with AMD, and AMD stock soars – qz.com
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OpenAI has struck a sweeping deal with chipmaker AMD to secure processors for artificial intelligence systems, an agreement that could give the ChatGPT maker a 10% stake in AMD and further speeds up its trillion-dollar infrastructure push.
The companies announced Monday that OpenAI will deploy up to 6 gigawatts of AMD’s high-performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, across several years and generations of hardware. The rollout will begin in the second half of 2026, and more capacity will be added in phases until the full 6-gigawatt target is reached.
AMD issued OpenAI a warrant for as many as 160 million shares of its stock, which could give the ChatGPT owner about about a tenth of the chipmaker’s shares. The amount of stock it eventually owns is tied to both to the scale of AMD hardware deployed and to share price milestones.
The chipmaker’s shares jumped as much as 37% in early trading Monday as executives said it would add tens of billions of dollars in revenue. AMD stock was still up more than 26% shortly after markets open. Shares in rival Nvidia, which recently unveiled a $100 billion deal of its own with OpenAI, slipped about 1.5% before trading closer to break-even.
It's the latest in a string of infrastructure deals for OpenAI. The company has pledged roughly $1 trillion in the last two weeks to expand its computing base, including a dedicated supply agreement with Nvidia. Analysts have said the scale of investment rivals the energy demand of major cities.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman called the new deal “a major step in building the compute capacity needed to realize AI’s full potential. AMD’s leadership in high-performance chips will enable us to accelerate progress and bring the benefits of advanced AI to everyone faster."
AMD has been investing heavily in recent years in the market for so-called accelerator chips, which are used to train and run advanced AI models, in which rival Nvidia is dominant. Nvidia’s data center division generated more than $115 billion in sales last year, while AMD’s AI-related revenue is expected to reach about $6.5 billion in 2025.
“We are thrilled to partner with OpenAI to deliver AI compute at massive scale,” AMD's chief executive Lisa Su said. “This agreement creates a true win-win enabling the world’s most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem.”
AMD's chief financial officer Jean Hu added that the deal is “expected to deliver tens of billions of dollars in revenue” for the company.
