Huang on AMD–OpenAI pact: “Clever” — and surprising to hand over 10%

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang did a double-take at AMD’s blockbuster tie-up with OpenAI, saying he’s surprised the rival chipmaker offered the ChatGPT creator a path to owning about a tenth of the company.

“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising… I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess,” Huang told CNBC.

AMD’s deal hands OpenAI warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares — roughly 10% if fully exercised — alongside a multiyear commitment to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs, starting with 1GW of the MI450 line in the back half of 2026. Investors cheered: AMD has ripped more than 35% this week and was up another 5% Wednesday, while Nvidia climbed nearly 3%.

Huang contrasted AMD’s structure with Nvidia’s own arrangement, which he framed as more straightforward: OpenAI agreed to build at least 10GW of Nvidia-based data centers and Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion over the next decade, a setup Huang says lets Nvidia sell directly into OpenAI’s buildout. He also suggested OpenAI will need to raise fresh capital to fund all that gear, via fast-growing revenues, equity or debt — and noted Nvidia expects a chance to invest alongside others. His only regret from prior OpenAI rounds, he added, was not writing a bigger check.

The Nvidia boss also confirmed a planned $2 billion investment in Elon Musk’s xAI and praised CoreWeave as part of the broader ecosystem sprinting to stand up AI infrastructure.

CNBC and Axios contributed to this report.