Nvidia’s plan to invest up to $100B in OpenAI has stalled after some leadership in the company expressed doubts about the deal, according to Wall Street Journal sources.
Quick Backstory: Last September, the two companies announced a circular deal that involved Nvidia investing up to $100B in OpenAI in exchange for OpenAI contracting Nvidia to build at least 10 gigawatts of computing power. The deal was expected to complete within a few weeks.
Flash forward to today: The talks haven’t progressed since then, according to sources. Now the two sides are rethinking the future of their partnership, including the possibility of Nvidia making an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI’s upcoming funding round that SoftBank, Amazon, and Microsoft may participate in as well.
Sources told WSJ that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has privately criticized what he described as a lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach and expressed concern about the competition it faces from Google and Anthropic. Ah, so he noticed too?
Huang has since pushed back on the rumors, calling them “nonsense.”
He told reporters in Taipei:
“We will definitely participate in the next round of financing, because it’s such a good investment. It’s a great pleasure.”
Huang went on to say that it would probably be “the largest investment we’ve ever made,” though he declined to specify how much it would be.
So is it $100B or not? Because the largest investment Nvidia has ever made was its $20B acquisition of Groq in December. So even exceeding that amount by a few billion is a far cry from the $100B previously announced.
It’s also important to note that the $100B deal from September may have played a significant role in OpenAI’s recent fundraising efforts and valuation, as it’s now seeking a $750B to $830B valuation. Without that $100B investment from Nvidia, does its new target valuation still hold?
Does OpenAI even own any shares of OpenAI anymore? It feels like they’ve either sold or promised away 200% of the company at this point.
