Big tech firms accelerating multi-billion-dollar investments for AI partnerships

NEW YORK

Tech giants like Nvidia, OpenAI, AMD and Oracle have stepped up multi-billion-dollar investments for artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships to strengthen their infrastructure and transform the global tech ecosystem amid rapidly rising demand for AI integration.

Global AI spending is expected to reach $375 billion this year and $500 billion in 2026, according to investment bank UBS.

The latest of these partnerships is between ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and chipmakers Nvidia and AMD.

AMD announced Monday that it entered a partnership with OpenAI. The chipmaker will provide custom chips to power OpenAI’s AI infrastructure. Initial deployment starts in the second half of 2026.

AMD granted OpenAI the right to purchase up to 160 million shares of the chipmaker as the partnership reaches certain milestones. The partnership is expected to generate billions of dollars in revenue.

Nvidia announced last month that it signed a letter of intent for a strategic partnership with OpenAI, which includes the deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems to train the AI firm’s next-generation models.

Nvidia also said it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to support data center and energy capacity as the next-generation AI systems come online. The chipmaker expects the first phase of the partnership to become operational in the second half of next year.

The Nvidia-OpenAI partnership complements the chipmaker’s existing collaborations with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and Stargate.

Nvidia in a statement last month also announced a collaboration with US-based chipmaker Intel to jointly develop special data center and personal computing products.

With this deal, Intel will make custom x86-based central processing units (CPUs) for data centers to be integrated into Nvidia’s AI infrastructure as well as x86 architecture system-on-chips (SOCs) that will be incorporated into Nvidia’s commercially available RTX graphics processing unit (GPU) chiplets.

Nvidia will invest $5 billion in Intel’s common stock at $23.28 per share as part of the partnership.

Meanwhile, the US government made an $8.9 billion investment in August, purchasing 433.3 million Intel shares at $20.47 each, which resulted in the government holding a 9.9% stake in the chipmaker.

Japan’s SoftBank Group signed a deal with Intel in August to invest $2 billion to enhance access to advanced technologies for digitalization, cloud computing and next-generation infrastructure.

Cloud computing firm CoreWeave announced in September that it will provide the cloud infrastructure to train OpenAI’s most advanced next-generation AI large language models (LLMs), following deals with the ChatGPT maker valued at up to $11.9 billion in March and $4 billion in May.

AI-focused cloud computing provider CoreWeave’s total value of contracts with OpenAI is valued around $22.4 billion.

CoreWeave filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in September, saying it signed a $6.3 billion contract to provide Nvidia access for all cloud capacity not sold to customers. The firm also filed a notice with the SEC at the end of last month due to its collaboration with Meta, saying it would provide the Facebook maker access to cloud computing capacity, specifically for AI development efforts.

Meta committed to paying CoreWeave $14.2 billion by the end of 2031.

Meanwhile, US e-commerce giant Amazon said in November 2024 that it would invest another $4 billion in Anthropic. Amazon announced in September 2023 that it would invest $1.25 billion into the AI startup founded by former OpenAI executives.

Amazon invested an additional $2.75 billion in Anthropic in March 2024, bringing the total to $8 billion.

In addition, in January this year, US President Donald Trump announced a private sector initiative called Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank projected to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States.

Meta invested over $14 billion in the AI startup Scale AI in a deal to deepen the commercial relationship between the two companies officially announced on June 12, with Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang joining Meta to work on AI projects.

Tesla and Samsung signed a $16.5 billion chip supply deal in July. Samsung will produce the next generation AI6 chip for Tesla at its new plant in Texas.

AI firm Windsurf on July 11 announced a strategic partnership with Google which was structured as a talent acquisition and technology licensing agreement valued at approximately $2.4 billion. Some members of Windsurf’s research and development team will join Google with the deal.

In early September, Nebius Group announced a multi-year agreement to provide Microsoft with AI infrastructure. The deal is valued at $17.4 billion and could reach $19.4 billion with potential additional services. Nebius will provide dedicated AI infrastructure capacity from its new data center in Vineland, New Jersey starting later in 2025.