OpenAI looks to take 10% stake in AMD through AI chip deal

OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices have reached a deal that could see Sam Altman’s company take a 10% stake in the chipmaker.

AMD stock skyrocketed more than 35% on Monday during premarket trading following the news.

OpenAI will deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD’s Instinct graphics processing units over multiple years and across multiple generations of hardware, the companies said Monday. It will kick off with an initial 1-gigawatt rollout of chips in the second half of 2026.

As part of the tie-up, AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock, with vesting milestones tied to both deployment volume and AMD’s share price.

The first tranche vests with the first full gigawatt deployment, with additional tranches unlocking as OpenAI scales to 6 gigawatts and meets key technical and commercial milestones required for large-scale rollout.

If OpenAI exercises the full warrant, it could acquire approximately 10% ownership in AMD, based on the current number of shares outstanding.

The ChatGPT maker said the deal was worth billions, but declined to disclose a specific dollar amount.

“AMD’s leadership in high-performance chips will enable us to accelerate progress and bring the benefits of advanced AI to everyone faster,” Altman, who is CEO of OpenAI, said in a release announcing the partnership.

The deal positions AMD as a core strategic partner to OpenAI, marking one of the largest GPU deployment agreements in the artificial intelligence industry to date.

The partnership could help ease industrywide pressure on supply chains and reduce OpenAI’s reliance on a single vendor.

OpenAI unveiled a landmark $100 billion equity-and-supply agreement with Nvidia nearly two weeks ago, cementing the chip giant’s role in powering the next generation of OpenAI models. That arrangement combined capital investment with long-term hardware supply — though in Nvidia’s case, it was the chipmaker taking an ownership stake in OpenAI. 

Shares of Nvidia fell 1% on Monday in premarket trading following news of the OpenAI-AMD deal.

That deal accounts for a dedicated 10-gigawatt portion of OpenAI’s broader 23-gigawatt infrastructure road map. At an estimated $50 billion in construction costs per gigawatt — together with the AMD deal — OpenAI has committed roughly $1 trillion in new buildout spending in just the past two weeks.

OpenAI is also in talks with Broadcom to build custom chips for its next generation of models.

The arrangement between OpenAI and AMD adds a new layer to the increasingly circular nature of AI’s corporate economy, where capital, equity and compute are traded among the same handful of companies building and powering the technology. 

Nvidia is supplying the capital to buy its chips. Oracle is helping build the sites. AMD and Broadcom are stepping in as suppliers. OpenAI is anchoring the demand.

It’s a tightly wound circular economy, and one that analysts fear could face real strain if any link in the chain starts to weaken.

For AMD, the partnership is both a commercial milestone and a validation of its next-generation Instinct road map.

After years of trailing Nvidia in the AI accelerator market, AMD now has a flagship customer at the forefront of the generative AI boom.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said it creates “a true win-win enabling the world’s most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem.”

It also reinforces OpenAI’s broader infrastructure ambitions.

Through its Stargate project, Altman’s startup is rapidly transforming into one of the most aggressive infrastructure builders in the AI sector. Its first site in Abilene, Texas, is already operational and running Nvidia chips, with construction continuing to expand capacity.

Upcoming builds in New Mexico, Ohio and the Midwest are expected to feature a mix of suppliers, including AMD.

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