"Nvidia Cuts Planned OpenAI Investment From 100 Billion to 30 Billion Dollars"

From Multi-Year Investment Partnership to Simple Equity Stake
Smaller in Scale but Still Nvidia's Largest-Ever Investment

Nvidia's planned investment in OpenAI, which was initially expected to be 100 billion dollars (about 144.68 trillion won), has reportedly been sharply reduced to 30 billion dollars. The multi-year investment partnership that was to be pursued alongside the 100 billion dollars will also be converted into a simple equity investment.

On the 19th (local time), the Financial Times (FT), citing sources, reported that Nvidia and OpenAI are in the final stages of negotiations over an equity investment and are expected to conclude the deal as early as this weekend.

Reuters and Yonhap News Agency

The sources said that while OpenAI plans to reinvest a significant portion of the capital secured through this investment into Nvidia hardware, the 100 billion dollar multi-year investment partnership announced in September last year will not go ahead.

In September last year, the two companies had announced a plan under which Nvidia would invest 10 billion dollars in OpenAI on 10 separate occasions, for a total of 100 billion dollars, and OpenAI would use these funds to purchase large quantities of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) and other artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

At the time, the market welcomed the alliance between the two companies at the center of the AI boom. There was also an assessment that the investment plan helped push Nvidia's market capitalization above 5 trillion dollars just a few weeks later. At the same time, concerns were raised about a circular transaction structure in which Nvidia's investment funds would be used again to buy Nvidia chips, as well as about an AI bubble. However, the agreement remained at the memorandum-of-understanding stage and never progressed to a formal contract.

Previously, Reuters reported that OpenAI had been pursuing alternative chips due to dissatisfaction with the performance of Nvidia's latest AI chips. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that growing skepticism within Nvidia about OpenAI's business practices had led the company to put its investment on hold. However, the two companies' chief executive officers (CEOs) personally stepped forward to deny these reports and dismissed speculation of discord.

Although the size has been reduced from the original plan, this OpenAI investment would still be the largest in Nvidia's history. It would far exceed the 20 billion dollar technology licensing deal announced last year with chip design firm Grok, as well as the 10 billion dollar investment in Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor.

In addition to Nvidia, OpenAI is in funding talks with Amazon, SoftBank, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sovereign fund MGX, and Microsoft (MS). According to the sources, SoftBank is expected to invest 30 billion dollars and Amazon up to 50 billion dollars. OpenAI is projected to raise more than 100 billion dollars in this funding round, which would bring its valuation to around 830 billion dollars.

The sources said OpenAI has told investors that it plans to spend about 600 billion dollars on computing resources by 2030, including capacity procured from Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.