Why Nvidia is 'highly motivated' to keep investing in OpenAI

By Britney Nguyen

The chip maker's investment is a hedge against Google and a way to keep demand for its chips, an analyst says

Nvidia, led by CEO Jensen Huang, is reportedly replacing its $100 billion deal with OpenAI with a $30 billion investment.

Nvidia may be pulling back on its $100 billion infrastructure agreement with OpenAI, but the relationship between the companies is crucial to the chip maker maintaining its dominance over an emerging competitor, according to an analyst.

D.A. Davidson managing director Gil Luria sees Nvidia (NVDA) as "highly motivated" to make investments in the ChatGPT maker, as it is "the main counterweight to Google," he told MarketWatch. Though reports suggest that the $100 billion investment, which grabbed headlines when it was announced in September, is now uncertain, Nvidia is still reportedly planning to invest in the AI startup's upcoming funding round.

While Nvidia's graphics processing units have dominated the AI-chip market, the company is facing growing competition from custom chip projects, including Google's (GOOGL) (GOOG) tensor processing units that have been codeveloped with Broadcom (AVGO) for more than a decade. Google's TPUs are used to train and run its Gemini AI models, which have become increasingly competitive with OpenAI's offerings.

See more: Can Nvidia's stock approach $400? Here's why earnings may mark the start of a big rally.

Amazon.com (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) have reason to back OpenAI too, Luria said in an email to MarketWatch, as they fear Google could win the market for consumer AI as it did the market for search.

Therefore, the companies "are trying to give OpenAI enough resources to maintain its current ChatGPT lead," he said.

The Financial Times reported on Thursday evening that Nvidia is replacing its long-term agreement to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI with a $30 billion investment in the AI startup's upcoming funding round, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. Under the partnership that was announced in September, Nvidia said that it would make incremental investments as each gigawatt of its GPUs is rolled out to support OpenAI's data-center buildout. OpenAI said that it planned to deploy 10 gigawatts' worth of Nvidia's systems.

Luria said, however, that he thinks the $30 billion investment is separate from the $100 billion infrastructure deal. CNBC reported on Thursday evening that the investments are not related.

"Given Nvidia's substantial cash position and cash flow, it sees this as the best investment available to stimulate demand for its products," Luria said.

The partnership between OpenAI and Nvidia sparked concerns among investors about circular financing, as part of the investment would be used to buy Nvidia's systems. OpenAI also announced partnerships with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Broadcom to deploy their AI chips. The AI startup would use money from its new funding round to buy Nvidia's chips, the Financial Times reported.

Nvidia declined to comment, and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from MarketWatch.

In late January, the Wall Street Journal reported that the $100 billion investment was "stalled" due to concerns from Nvidia, including over OpenAI's competition with rival AI-model makers Anthropic and Google.

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-Britney Nguyen

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02-20-26 1351ET