ChatGPT producer OpenAI is making another major investment aimed at ramping up its data center development plans to further its push in artificial intelligence.
The company, based in San Francisco, is investing tens of billions of dollars in chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, based in Santa Clara.
OpenAI plans to buy 6 gigawatts of AMD chips in coming years, enough to power several AI data centers, in a partnership that gives the San Francisco-based parent of ChatGPT the option to acquire a roughly 10% stake in the chip designer.
The announcement comes two weeks after AMD rival Nvidia unveiled a $100 billion investment in OpenAI that would add at least 10 gigawatts of data center computing power. The deals are the latest by the tech giants — and others such as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google — to secure land, real estate and power needed to support the expected expansion in computer systems that may rival humans for reasoning and intuition.
"This is all incremental to our work with NVIDIA (and we plan to increase our NVIDIA purchasing over time)," Altman said in a post on X about the latest partnership. "The world needs much more compute."
Still, the deal comes amid concerns about the rapid expansion of AI during an unclear picture of where the economy and industry is headed, including whether the hundreds of billions in planned capital projects could contribute to an investment bubble in the data center sector.
However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement that the latest partnership is "a major step in building the compute capacity needed to realize AI’s full potential.”
Inside the deal
Under the agreement, AMD’s processors would power OpenAI’s next-generation AI networks, with the first 1-gigawatt of processors set to come online in the second half of 2026, according to a joint statement by the companies.
As part of the deal, AMD issued OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million shares of common stock. Vesting of the shares would scale up as the chip supplier provides the full 6 gigawatts in processing power.
The agreement adds to other massive high-energy projects rolled out across the country, including Stargate, a $500 billion investment in data centers in Abilene, Texas, by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank that aims for a final buildout capacity of 10 gigawatts.
One gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes at the same time. It's also equal to the energy generated by about 1.9 million solar panels or nearly 300 land-based wind turbines, according to the U.S. Energy Department website.
The deal underscores how much computing power is needed to meet AI demand, a Barclays analyst said in a note to investors.
“We realize that there will be delays with these deals, and that the infrastructure required largely doesn’t exist today," according to analyst Tom O’Malley. "But we would again highlight this as a proof point that the ecosystem is desperate for more compute.”
Top-tier investments
The AI revolution has contributed to a dramatic rise in both U.S. data center and energy demand that has not gone unnoticed by commercial real estate investors.
Data centers and other properties related to "the digital economy" have been among the top picks of investors surveyed for Deloitte’s new 2026 Commercial Real Estate Outlook, surpassing warehouses and other logistics properties.
Roughly 95% of major real estate investors plan to increase investments in data centers in the coming years, with 41% allocating $500 million or more in 2025, according to a recent survey by real estate services firm CBRE.
Such analysts as Goldman Sachs research strategist Ryan Hammond have raised concerns about the potential for an investment bubble to burst if an "inevitable slowdown" in capital expenditures occurs as major tech players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle pull back on projects.
Other analysts have noted that long wait times for power grid connections could prevent data center overbuilding.
"Power delays remain a significant hurdle in alleviating supply constraints, however, there is a silver lining," according to JLL's Mid-Year 2025 North America Data Center Report. "This obstacle is also preventing a bubble from forming in the sector."