Nvidia and OpenAI Sign $100B Partnership for AI Ambitions

Nvidia has announced a partnership to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, the largest AI infrastructure deal ever conceived.

The plan is to build one of the most powerful computing networks ever assembled, with 10 gigawatts of AI infrastructure that could reshape the entire tech landscape. Within hours of the announcement, Nvidia’s stock surged over 4%.

See the scale

The 10-gigawatt project could require total investment exceeding $500 billion. That makes Nvidia’s $100 billion commitment the opening move, not the whole game. Building one gigawatt of data center capacity costs between $50-60 billion, with roughly $35 billion flowing straight into Nvidia chips and systems.

10 gigawatts are equivalent to roughly 4-5 million GPUs, about the same number Nvidia expects to ship globally this entire year. As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC, think of it like packing a decade of GPU production into a single buildout.

AI arms race

The first gigawatt of Nvidia systems will be deployed in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform, giving OpenAI a head start that is measured in gigawatts, not servers. While Google, Amazon, and Microsoft rush to expand their AI infrastructure, OpenAI gets access to computing power that dwarfs today’s status quo.

OpenAI currently serves 700 million weekly active users, and this build gives them room to scale toward billions while pushing on superintelligence research. Looking at the bigger picture, the International Energy Agency estimates global data center electricity demand could reach 945 terawatt hours by 2030. You could argue that if two companies control the largest, most efficient infrastructure, they could win the decade.

The energy reality

Power is the new bottleneck. This planned infrastructure buildout would significantly increase global energy consumption. Data centers already use roughly 1.5 percent of global electricity in 2024, and the curve is bending upward.

The response is visible in boardrooms and on the grid. Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement to restart a Three Mile Island reactor for 835 megawatts. Amazon Web Services purchased a data center next to Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear plant, with plans to use up to 960 megawatts. Nuclear power is no longer a nice-to-have, it is becoming the backbone strategy for AI scale.

Launchpad or contract?

This arguably is not just a contract, it is a launchpad. Huang told CNBC the $100 billion investment comes on top of all existing commitments, and it was not included in recent financial forecasts. It seems the runway is long and the spending is just getting started.

The coalition forming around this is unprecedented. The partnership complements OpenAI and Nvidia’s work with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and Stargate partners, a who’s who of cloud and capital aligned on one vision. With OpenAI aiming to build artificial general intelligence, this infrastructure could be the bedrock for superintelligence within the next decade.