Nvidia CEO Says Firm Never Committed to $100 Billion OpenAI Investment

Nvidia’s chief executive says his company’s proposed twelve-figure investment into OpenAI was “never a commitment.”

“They invited us to invest up to $100 billion and of course, we were, we were very happy and honored that they invited us, but we will invest one step at a time,” Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on Sunday (Feb. 1), per a report from Bloomberg News.

In a letter of intent signed in September of last year, Nvidia said it planned to invest as much as $100 billion in OpenAI to help it construct data centers and other artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, with those data centers using Nvidia chips.

Huang’s comments came in the wake of a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report from Friday (Jan. 30) which said the planned investment had stalled after some people within Nvidia began having doubts about the deal.

That report — which cited sources familiar with the matter — said that Huang had privately stressed that the $100 billion agreement was nonbinding, had privately criticized what he has characterized as a lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach and expressed worries about competition.

Per the Bloomberg report, Huang said Saturday (Jan. 31) it was “nonsense” to suggest he was unhappy with OpenAI.

“We will invest a great deal of money,” he said. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.”

The news follows another WSJ report from last week that OpenAI was accelerating plans for a potential initial public offering (IPO) that could arrive as soon as the fourth quarter.

“The push is being watched closely across the digital economy because it would test investor appetite for big-ticket AI growth stories that also require massive spending on chips and infrastructure — costs that ripple through cloud, commerce and payments,” PYMNTS wrote.

Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that, for consumers who used a dedicated AI platform for at least one task, OpenAI’s ChatGPT leads the pack at 83%, compared to a respective 48% and 30% for users of Google’s and Microsoft’s chatbots.

The gap is noteworthy, PYMNTS wrote, as it shows where usage starts, with most users seeming to begin with a platform and stick with it, rather than testing several comparable tools.

“Because the data measures whether a consumer has used a platform at least once, it reflects exposure rather than sustained engagement,” the report added. “Still, exposure at this scale shapes behavior. In consumer software, the platform that introduces users to a category often becomes the reference point for how the category works.”

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