OpenAI’s Sam Altman and AMD’s Lisa Su testify before the Senate on May 08, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Nvidia may be dominating the graphics processing unit (GPU) market right now, but its closest rival, AMD, is catching up. Today, (Oct. 6), AMD announced a landmark collaboration with OpenAI that mirrors a recent deal between OpenAI and Nvidia. Under the agreement, AMD will deploy six gigawatts of computing power to OpenAI, which will in turn have the option to acquire up to 10 percent of AMD’s stock—a stake worth roughly $33 billion now after the announcement sent AMD shares to soar 24 percent.
The partnership gives OpenAI a critical boost in computing resources as it continues to roll out new A.I. models and tools. “This partnership is a major step in building the compute capacity needed to realize A.I.’s full potential,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement.
OpenAI’s first one-gigawatt deployment is scheduled for the second half of 2026 and will use AMD’s MI450 chips. This initial rollout will coincide with a vesting schedule of AMD stock for OpenAI, allowing OpenAI to acquire up to 160 million shares as deployments scale to six gigawatts. The stock grant will vest based on OpenAI hitting technical and commercial milestones. The full deal will only be executed if AMD’s stock reaches $600 per share. AMD shares are currently traded at $204 apiece.
The AMD partnership is the latest in a string of blockbuster A.I. deals. Nvidia recently announced its own long-term pact with OpenAI, pledging up to $100 billion in investments over the next decade. In return, OpenAI will obtain as much as 10 gigawatts of computing power from Nvidia’s systems.
Global venture capital funding rose 38 percent year-over-year to $97 billion in the third quarter, according to Crunchbase, with nearly half of that money flowing into A.I. ventures. Analysts say the current boom evokes the early days of the internet.
“We still believe we are in the early innings of this spending cycle,” said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, in a client note. AMD’s new deal with OpenAI marks a “1996 moment” for the tech world, he added, likening today’s A.I. momentum to the foundational years of the tech economy.
Nvidia’s shares slipped more than 1 percent today following AMD’s announcement, but the company still holds a commanding lead with more than 90 percent of the global GPU market. Nvidia’s early success in meeting A.I.-fueled GPU demand has propelled its market cap to $4.5 trillion and fueled $41 billion in data center revenue between May and July. AMD, in comparison, has a market cap of $334 billion and brought in $3.2 billion in data center revenue in its most recent quarter.
Lisa Su, who has led AMD as CEO since 2014, is confident that the OpenAI deal will accelerate that growth. Her company has a “clear line of sight” to achieve tens of billions of dollars in data center revenue by 2027, Su told analysts today, adding that these numbers could grow even higher. “In addition to the OpenAI opportunity, and the very significant revenue addition there, we expect to generate well over $100 billion in the next several years,” she said.
