OpenAI signs its third Big chip deal, partners with Broadcom to build AI processors

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has struck its third major with , agreeing to purchase 10 gigawatts of computer chips from the US semiconductor giant. This partnership is the latest in a series of deals by the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence (AI) start-up worth hundreds of billions of dollars with Nvidia and AMD.

According to a report by The Financial Times, the order means OpenAI could spend another $350 billion to $500 billion on top of the roughly $1 trillion in chip and data centre deals it has signed in recent months as it races to secure the computing power to run services such as ChatGPT.

OpenAI’s string of massive chip deals

In September, OpenAI agreed to buy chips with a total power consumption of 10 gigawatts from Nvidia. Last week, the company announced it would buy a further 6 gigawatts of chips from rival chip designer AMD. OpenAI also recently struck a data centre deal with Oracle that will cost $300 billion over five years.

The agreements also commit OpenAI to an ambitious infrastructure development project, as deploying the chips will require building vast new data centres.

OpenAI custom designs chip with Broadcom

Under the latest deal, OpenAI has co-designed custom chips with Broadcom specifically for running its own AI models, marking the first time the start-up has produced its own AI chips. When completed, the deals would bring OpenAI's total access to computing capacity to over 26 gigawatts—equivalent to about 26 nuclear reactors.

In a podcast announcing the deal, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said his company had been working with Broadcom for 18 months to develop the custom chips, which would give it a “gigantic amount of computing infrastructure.” He described the race to develop AI infrastructure as "the biggest joint industrial project in human history."

The chips have been designed specifically for inference, the process by which an AI responds to users' requests, Altman said.