OpenAI to buy $10B+ worth of AMD hardware, stock through new partnership – News

OpenAI will buy tens of billions of dollars’ worth of data center hardware from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. as part of a partnership announced today.

The ChatGPT developer could also receive the option to purchase about 160 million AMD shares, which represents an approximately 10% stake. The amount of stock that OpenAI will buy depends partly on how well it fulfills the terms of the partnership.

The collaboration will see the artificial intelligence provider deploy 6 gigawatts’ worth of AMD graphics processing units to power its workloads. OpenAI will kick off the project with a one gigawatt deployment of the chipmaker’s upcoming Instinct MI450 GPU series. According to OpenAI, work on that initial cluster will begin in the second half of 2026.

The MI450 is the planned successor to the MI355X, AMD’s flagship data center AI accelerator. The MI355X is a liquid-cooled GPU that includes 10 chiplets, three different types of AI cores and 288 gigabytes of HBM3E memory. It can provide more than 10 petaflops of performance when processing FP4 numbers, lightweight units of data that AI models often use in calculations.

“With energy and cost critical issues, infrastructure decisions will increasingly be driven by a platform’s ability to deliver the best balance of speed, economics, and energy efficiency for each application it’s running,” said Sid Sheth, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of AI hardware startup d-Matrix Inc.

The MI355X is designed for use in both AI clusters and supercomputers. It’s believed the upcoming MI450 will have a more specialized design optimized solely for AI infrastructure. According to a May report, the chip will lack support for certain data formats that are commonly used in supercomputers but aren’t as popular among language model developers.

It’s believed the MI450 will also support a technology called Ultra Accelerator Link, or UALink for short. It’s an open-source interconnect for linking together the GPUs in AI clusters. The current iteration of the standard supports clusters with up to 1,024 AI accelerators.

OpenAI and AMD describe their partnership as a “multi-year, multi-generation agreement.” That hints the ChatGPT developer plans to purchase not only the MI450 but also subsequent generations of chips.

“Our partnership with OpenAI is expected to deliver tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD while accelerating OpenAI’s AI infrastructure buildout,” said AMD Chief Financial Officer Jean Hu.

It’s possible the deal will see OpenAI buy not only chips but also other types of hardware. 

Last year, AMD spent $4.8 billion to acquire ZT Systems Inc., a low-profile developer of servers and rack-scale systems. In May, SemiAnalysis reported that the chipmaker plans to ship the MI450 as part of rack-scale appliances that will each contain 128 GPUs. The appliances are expected to launch in the second half of 2026, which is when OpenAI plans to start building its initial one gigawatt MI450  deployment.

The partnership with AMD includes a stock warrant that will give OpenAI the option to buy 160 million shares of the chipmaker’s shares if certain conditions are met. The first batch of shares is set to vest once OpenAI sets up its initial one gigawatt deployment. According to AMD, the remaining stock will become available gradually as additional data center capacity comes online.

OpenAI must also fulfill certain other requirements to access the shares. It will have to meet “technical and commercial milestones required to enable AMD deployments at scale,” the companies said. Additionally, the chipmaker’s share price will have to top a certain unspecified threshold.

The tie-up comes less than a month after Nvidia Corp. agreed to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a similar partnership. The ChatGPT developer will deploy at least 10 gigawatts’ worth of hardware powered by Vera Rubin, Nvidia’s next flagship AI chip. Like AMD’s MI450 series, the processor is expected to start shipping in the second half of 2026.

Photo: AMD