Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has indicated that the company’s potential investment in OpenAI is unlikely to reach the initially pledged $US100 billion. Huang cited OpenAI’s plans to go public, potentially by the end of the year, as a primary reason for the revised investment strategy. Nvidia designs and manufactures graphics processors for the gaming and professional markets. The company is also a major supplier of system software and application programming interfaces.
Nvidia contributed $US30 billion to a $US100 billion funding round for OpenAI last month, valuing the ChatGPT creator at $US730 billion. Although it was the chipmaker’s largest single bet on a startup to date, the investment was significantly less than the $US100 billion that Nvidia had pledged to consider as part of an agreement with OpenAI in September. The smaller investment raised concerns about a potential souring of relations between the two companies, despite Huang’s recent praise for OpenAI’s work.
OpenAI declined to comment on Huang’s remarks. Meanwhile, Nvidia’s shares experienced a positive bump, trading 2.5 per cent higher in New York near 2.30pm. Huang also noted that Nvidia’s recent $US10 billion investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic “probably will be the last” one in that company. Anthropic has also laid the groundwork for its own initial public offering.
