Nvidia and OpenAI inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in September 2025, signaling the former’s intent to build data centers capable of delivering 10 gigawatts of compute power for the latter to lease, and to invest $100 billion in the AI company to help fund it. However, several months have passed since that announcement, and it seems the deal is going nowhere. OpenAI had hoped to seal the deal a few weeks after the initial agreement, but sources told The Wall Street Journal that the talks have largely stalled since then.
It seems both parties are rethinking the deal terms, although OpenAI could still receive tens of billions of dollars from Nvidia through an equity investment. According to the publication, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been privately telling his peers that the $100 billion MOU isn’t binding and is still subject to change.
Furthermore, although Huang said that OpenAI is “likely going to be the next multi-trillion-dollar hyperscaler company,” he has also been quietly criticizing the AI company’s approach to its business. People familiar with the matter say that the Nvidia CEO is concerned about the company's lack of business discipline and competition from Anthropic and Google. An analyst actually seems to agree with the leather-clad CEO, predicting that the company could run out of cash by mid-2027.
Despite that, Huang still believes in financially supporting the maker of ChatGPT, partly because it’s one of Nvidia’s largest customers. Although it has other big clients like Oracle and xAI, OpenAI’s failure would still put a big dent in the AI chipmaker’s order book. Aside from that, Google uses its own TPU chip. In contrast, Anthropic uses a combination of Google’s TPU and Amazon’s Trainium chips, meaning Anthropic does not rely on Nvidia for its hardware needs.
It’s unclear how the supposed partnership between these two AI giants will proceed. While we might no longer see the $100 billion blockbuster deal between them, there’s still a chance that OpenAI will get a massive infusion of cash even as it seeks to soothe investor concerns about its future profitability ahead of its planned IPO.
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