Talks between Nvidia and OpenAI over a potential investment of up to $100 billion have collapsed, stalling what would have been one of the largest strategic deals in the global artificial intelligence ecosystem, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The discussions reportedly broke down after concerns were raised within Nvidia about the structure and scale of the proposed transaction. The two companies had announced a letter of intent in September, positioning the deal as a long-term partnership to fund massive AI infrastructure, including new data centres powered by Nvidia’s chips.
At the time, the plan involved building AI compute capacity of nearly 10 gigawatts roughly equivalent to the peak electricity demand of New York City underscoring the ambition behind OpenAI’s next phase of expansion.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Nvidia said it remains OpenAI’s “preferred partner” and looks forward to continuing collaboration, but did not comment on the status of the investment talks. OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.
While the original $100 billion proposal is now off the table, the partnership is not entirely dead. According to the Journal, Nvidia may still invest tens of billions of dollars as part of OpenAI’s ongoing fundraising round, albeit on revised terms.
OpenAI is currently seeking to raise up to $100 billion in fresh capital to fund compute, data centres and model development. Separately, Amazon is in discussions to invest as much as $50 billion, while also expanding its cloud infrastructure partnership with the AI startup.
The development comes amid growing scrutiny of so-called “circular investments” in the AI sector, where hardware or infrastructure providers invest in companies that are also major customers. Nvidia itself recently announced an additional $2 billion investment in CoreWeave, a cloud computing firm that relies heavily on Nvidia’s GPUs.
Such arrangements have sparked debate about the sustainability of the AI funding boom. However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly dismissed these concerns, arguing that these investments represent only a small fraction of the capital required to build global AI infrastructure.
Despite the collapse of talks, Nvidia remains central to OpenAI’s operations as the dominant supplier of AI processors. The episode highlights both the scale of ambition and the growing complexity of financing the next phase of the AI arms race, where compute, capital and strategic control are increasingly intertwined.
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