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NVIDIA announced a series of major deals in September. The company, known for its graphics processors and artificial intelligence (AI) computing systems, unveiled a $100 billion partnership with OpenAI to build next-generation AI infrastructure, a $5 billion investment and chip venture with Intel and new initiatives in data centers and personal computing.
By working with Intel on CPUs and committing large GPU deployments with OpenAI, NVIDIA has set its sights on an expanded role across both infrastructure and consumer markets. The company’s September announcements also highlight how central NVIDIA has become to the AI development and deployment.
Pairing Up with Intel
Intel and NVIDIA have historically competed in data centers and personal computing on opposite sides of the CPU and GPU markets. Intel has dominated CPUs while NVIDIA has led GPUs, putting the two companies in direct competition in data centers and personal computing. Now they’re partnering on products and investments that tie their technologies together.
In September, NVIDIA announced the collaboration, which will focus on jointly developing “multiple generations of custom data center and PC products that accelerate applications and workloads across hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets,” the company stated in a press release.
The two companies will work together to connect their architectures. For data centers, Intel will build NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer to the market. For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets.
The new x86 RTX SOCs will power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs. “AI is powering a new industrial revolution and reinventing every layer of the computing stack, from silicon to systems to software,” said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, in the announcement. “This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem, a fusion of two world-class platforms.”
The Fine Points
Reuters says the new partnership includes a plan for the two companies to jointly develop PC and data center chips, but that it will not involve Intel’s contract manufacturing business making computing chips for NVIDIA. “Intel’s foundry business will, however, supply the central processors and advanced packaging for the joint products,” the publication adds.
The companies didn’t disclose the financial terms of their collaboration but said they would make "multiple generations" of future products. “The deal adds to Intel's growing reserve of capital, following a $2 billion investment from Softbank and the $5.7 billion investment from the U.S. government,” Reuters adds.
“This is a massive game-changer for Intel and effectively resets its position of AI-laggard into a cog in future AI infrastructure,” eMarketer’s Gadjo Sevilla told Reuters.
The NVIDIA-OpenAI Alliance
September was a busy month for NVIDIA, which also announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI. Together, the two companies will deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI’s next-generation AI infrastructure to train and run its next generation of models on the path to deploying superintelligence, NVIDIA announced.
To support this deployment, which includes both data center and power capacity, NVIDIA will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as the former’s new systems are deployed. The first phase is targeted to come online in the second half of 2026 using the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.
“NVIDIA and OpenAI have pushed each other for a decade, from the first DGX supercomputer to the breakthrough of ChatGPT,” Huang said in a press release. “This investment and infrastructure partnership marks the next leap forward — deploying 10 gigawatts to power the next era of intelligence.”
OpenAI Co-founder and President Greg Brockman said his company has been working closely with NVIDIA since the early days of OpenAI. “We’ve utilized their platform to create AI systems that hundreds of millions of people use every day,” he added. “We’re excited to deploy 10 gigawatts of compute with NVIDIA to push back the frontier of intelligence and scale the benefits of this technology to everyone.”
