Openai bestowed its blessings and support on another tech company on Monday, striking a deal with the chipmakers’ advanced microdevices, instantly making it one of the hot companies investors hope will be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom.
Shares of AMD soared more than 30% after the company behind Chatgpt said it planned to take a 10% stake in the chipmaker. It marks the latest example of Sam Altman’s multibillion-dollar deal spree reshaping the U.S. chip industry, where the Openai Upstart appears to have the power to pick new winners, revive laggards and move public markets through its partnerships.
Under the multi-year agreement, Openai will purchase AMD’s AI chips that will go into data center facilities that, in total, can draw six gigawatts of electrical power to run the chips. The first One-Gigawatt deployment will begin with AMD Instinct Mi450 GPUs in the second half of 2026.
“This partnership is a major step in building the computing capacity needed to realize the full potential of AI,” Altman, chief executive of Openai, said in a press release. “AMD’s leadership in high-performance chips will allow us to accelerate progress and bring the benefits of advanced AI to everyone faster.”
OpenAI received a mandate to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock, or about 10% of the chipmaker. The vesting of the shares will not occur at once and is intended as a multi-year commitment, in which OpenAI can purchase shares of AMD at a low price of $0.01.
The actions are only accompanied by specific AMD-related milestones reaching certain stock price targets, and whether OpenAI continues to purchase and deploy AMD chips at scale. The first tranche of stock comes with the initial deployment of one gigawatt, with additional tranches acquitting as purchases expand up to six gigawatts, according to the press release.
The deal is expected to bring tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD.
“This partnership brings together the best of AMD and Openai to create a true win-win, enabling the construction of the world’s most ambitious AI and advancing the entire AI ecosystem,” said Dr. Lisa SU, President and CEO of AMD, in a press release.
Globally, companies are expected to spend $375 billion on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025.
The race to build artificial general intelligence — a hypothesized AI system capable of performing all cognitive tasks performed by humans — has launched the need to build large-scale AI data centers that house specialized chips called graphics processing units.
Nvidia is the main supplier of these graphics chips and commands 70% of AI chip sales. However, as demand for different types of AI workloads increases, startups and legacy rivals have sought to offer more affordable alternatives to Nvidia’s chips.
Altman has repeatedly spoken out about the chip shortage and has sought to diversify Openai’s chip offerings, signing a $10 billion deal with Broadcom earlier last month to design custom AI chips.
OpenAI is currently valued at $500 billion, with 700 million weekly active users.
Altman sought to invest billions of dollars in computing resources to support Openai’s efforts to win the AI race. In January, alongside Japanese investor Softbank and database provider Oracle, OpenAI committed $100 billion to build AI infrastructure in the United States. Under the “Stargate Project,” companies plan to invest $500 billion over the next four years.
Openai signed a agreement In May, to build a one-gigawatt data center complex in the United Arab Emirates, a deal that was brokered by the Trump administration. Oracle, Nvidia, SoftBank, Cisco and G42, an Emirati AI company backed by the Royals, are ready to support the project.
