SAN FRANCISCO, California: OpenAI said it is partnering with Broadcom to design and produce custom artificial intelligence chips, marking the ChatGPT maker’s latest move to reduce its reliance on existing chip suppliers such as Nvidia and AMD amid soaring demand for computing power.
The California-based companies did not disclose financial terms but said they expect to begin deploying racks of new AI accelerators late next year. The collaboration will give OpenAI greater control over the design and performance of the hardware that powers its fast-growing suite of AI models.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company began working with Broadcom 18 months ago to develop the chips, which will support what he called “a gigantic amount of computing infrastructure” — about 10 gigawatts of capacity — needed to meet global AI demand.
Broadcom, a key supplier to Amazon and Google, will manufacture the custom semiconductors as part of its expanding AI portfolio. Broadcom’s shares rose more than nine percent following the announcement.
“If you do your own chips, you control your destiny,” Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said during a podcast discussing the partnership. He added that OpenAI requires ever-larger computing resources as it advances “towards a better and better frontier model and towards superintelligence.”
The deal comes as OpenAI strikes a series of high-profile partnerships across the semiconductor and cloud ecosystem. In recent weeks, the company has announced agreements with Nvidia and AMD to supply advanced GPUs, as well as with Oracle, CoreWeave, and other data-center providers that host those chips.
Analysts say the Broadcom collaboration signals OpenAI’s intent to develop an in-house chip strategy. This is similar to moves by major tech players like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, all of which have created custom AI hardware to gain an edge in performance and cost.
“What’s real about this announcement is OpenAI’s intention of having its own custom chips,” said Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson. “The rest is fantastical. OpenAI has made, at this point, approaching US$1 trillion of commitments, and it’s a company that only has $15 billion of revenue.”
OpenAI, which has not yet made a profit, says its products have more than 800 million weekly users. Many of its partnerships involve circular financing, with chipmakers and cloud providers investing in OpenAI while also supplying it with infrastructure. This dynamic, some analysts say, could fuel an AI investment bubble.
Still, Altman described the Broadcom deal as key to scaling OpenAI’s next generation of models. “The world’s appetite for advanced intelligence is enormous,” he said. “We’re building the infrastructure to serve it.”