TAIPEI: Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang says the company’s proposed US$100bil investment in OpenAI was “never a commitment” and that the company would consider any funding rounds “one at a time”.
“It was never a commitment,” Huang told reporters in Taipei. “They invited us to invest up to US$100bil and of course, we were, we were very happy and honoured that they invited us, but we will invest one step at a time.”
As part of a letter of intent signed in September, Nvidia said it planned to invest as much as US$100bil in OpenAI to support new data centres and other artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
The deal was designed to help OpenAI build data centres with a capacity of at least 10GW of power – equivalent to the peak electricity demand of New York City – equipped with Nvidia’s advanced chips to train and deploy AI models.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the investment plan announced in September had stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed doubts about the deal.
Citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that Huang had privately emphasised that the US$100bil agreement was nonbinding, had privately criticised what he has described as a lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach and expressed concern about competition. — Bloomberg
