Nvidia CEO pushes back against report that his company’s $100B OpenAI investment has stalled | TechCrunch

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Saturday that a recent report of friction between his company and OpenAI was “nonsense.”

Huang’s comments came after The Wall Street Journal published a story late Friday claiming that Nvidia was looking to scale back its investment in OpenAI. The two companies announced a plan in September in which Nvidia would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and also build 10 gigawatts of computing infrastructure for the AI company.

However, the WSJ said Huang has begun emphasizing that the deal is nonbinding, and that he’s also privately criticized OpenAI’s business strategy and expressed concerns about competitors like Anthropic and Google.

The WSJ also reported that the two companies are rethinking their relationship — though that doesn’t mean cutting things off entirely, with recent discussions reportedly focusing on an equity investment of a mere tens of billions of dollars from Nvidia.

An OpenAI spokesperson told the WSJ that the companies are “actively working through the details of our partnership,” adding that Nvidia “has underpinned our breakthroughs from the start, powers our systems today, and will remain central as we scale what comes next.”

According to Bloomberg, reporters asked Huang about the report during a visit to Taipei. In response, he insisted that Nvidia will “definitely participate” in OpenAI’s latest funding round “because it’s such a good investment,” according to Bloomberg. 

“We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang said. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.”

He apparently declined to specify how much Nvidia would be investing, instead saying, “Let [OpenAI CEO Sam Altman] announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide.”

The WSJ reported in December that OpenAI is looking to raise a $100 billion funding round, while The New York Times said this week that Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, and SoftBank are all discussing potential investments.