OpenAI has reached a strategic agreement with AMD to use the chipmaker’s Instinct GPUs to build six gigawatts of Artificial Intelligence infrastructure, with AMD expecting to earn tens of billions of dollars from the deal. The rollout centers on AMD’s new Instinct MI450 GPUs, with the first one gigawatt of capacity slated for deployment in the second half of 2026. OpenAI characterized AMD as a core strategic compute partner for large-scale deployments, underscoring the company’s push to secure diversified, long-term access to advanced accelerators.
As part of the arrangement, OpenAI received the right to purchase 160 million AMD shares at one cent apiece. Those shares vest over time as specific deployment milestones are met, beginning with the first one gigawatt tranche, and could ultimately give OpenAI up to a 10 percent stake in AMD. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said AMD’s leadership in high-performance chips will accelerate progress and help deliver the benefits of advanced Artificial Intelligence to more people, framing the pact as both a technology and supply-chain milestone.
The AMD partnership arrives amid a flurry of alliances across the Artificial Intelligence hardware stack. OpenAI recently outlined a separate plan with Nvidia to use its chips to build at least 10 gigawatts of Artificial Intelligence data centers, with funding delivered in waves tied to each new gigawatt and initial deployments also targeted for the second half of 2026. OpenAI is additionally working with Microsoft on technology sharing, with Microsoft’s investment structured to receive 49 percent of OpenAI’s profits. In parallel, Nvidia has invested in Intel to connect accelerated computing with Intel’s CPU technologies, and Intel has been tasked with developing Nvidia-custom x86 CPUs for both the market and Artificial Intelligence infrastructure platforms. Taken together, the moves highlight intensifying competition among chipmakers and cloud partners to supply the compute behind the next generation of Artificial Intelligence services.
