AMD has announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI, committing to supply six gigawatts of processors specifically for artificial intelligence data centers. This partnership seeks to challenge Nvidia’s currently leading position in the AI chip market. Under the five-year agreement, AMD will kick off a gigawatt deployment of its Instinct MI450 GPUs in the latter half of 2026, as outlined in AMD’s official press release.
AMD indicated that this alliance could yield “tens of billions of dollars in revenue,” although they did not offer specific financial projections. Following the announcement on Monday, AMD’s stock soared by 24 percent in pre-market trading.
This deal comes after OpenAI recently formed a “strategic partnership” with Nvidia, which would allow the AI company to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of data centers utilizing Nvidia GPUs. Although a letter of intent has been signed, the arrangement is still pending finalization and includes Nvidia’s commitment to invest “up to $100 billion in OpenAI.”
OpenAI characterized Nvidia as a “preferred strategic compute and networking partner” for establishing new AI data centers, while AMD has been referred to as a “core strategic compute partner” in the context of the latest announcement. As part of their collaboration, AMD has also provided OpenAI the potential to acquire up to 160 million AMD shares, roughly translating to a ten percent equity stake at one cent per share, contingent upon the achievement of specific milestones.
OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership, stating, “This collaboration is a significant advancement toward building the computational resources required for unlocking AI’s full capabilities. With AMD’s cutting-edge technologies in high-performance chips, we can expedite our progress and more swiftly provide the benefits of advanced AI to everyone.”
The agreements with AMD and Nvidia follow adjustments to the previously exclusive arrangement between OpenAI and Microsoft made in January, which now permits OpenAI to explore partnerships with other cloud service providers for computational resources. OpenAI and Microsoft are poised to enter a new phase in their cooperation, having recently announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” in September that could potentially lead to OpenAI going public.
AMD’s CEO, Lisa Su, expressed her excitement regarding the partnership, claiming, “We are delighted to collaborate with OpenAI to provide massive-scale AI compute capabilities. This partnership represents a merger of the strengths of both AMD and OpenAI, fostering a mutually beneficial arrangement that will enable an extensive AI expansion and support the advancement of the broader AI ecosystem.”
