Nvidia is preparing one of the largest investments in the history of artificial intelligence, pledging up to $100 billion in funding for OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. The deal comes hot on the heels of Nvidia pledging a $5 billion investment into Intel, its one-time rival and former American semiconductor champion.

The companies jointly announced they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems for OpenAI’s next-generation AI infrastructure to train and run its next generation of models. Nvidia’s investment will go directly toward building data center and power capacity, the announcement said.

Nvidia’s investment will be progressive and tied to OpenAI’s deployment of each gigawatt of new AI infrastructure, with the first gigawatt scheduled to come online in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform. This rollout aims to address the extraordinary computing demands of OpenAI’s forthcoming models, which target advances toward artificial general intelligence.

“We’ve been working closely with NVIDIA since the early days of OpenAI,” said Greg Brockman, cofounder and president of OpenAI, nothing OpenAI had utilized its platform to create AI systems that hundreds of millions of people are now using on a daily basis as they interact with ChatGPT. “We’re excited to deploy 10 gigawatts of compute with NVIDIA to push back the frontier of intelligence and scale the benefits of this technology to everyone.”

Strategic aims and roadmap

Under the agreement, OpenAI will designate Nvidia as its preferred strategic compute and networking partner for its AI factory expansion. Both companies have committed to “co-optimizing” hardware and software development roadmaps, aligning OpenAI’s model and infrastructure software innovations directly with Nvidia’s next-generation GPU and networking products.

The investment does not stand alone; it builds on a broader network of AI industry collaborations, including ongoing alliances with Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank, and Stargate partners, all focused on constructing the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure. OpenAI’s rapid growth—now more than 700 million weekly active users, according to the company—reflects surging demand not just from consumers but also enterprises and developers worldwide, for whom advanced computing resources are critical.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.