AMD Shares Skyrocket 31% As OpenAI Eyes 10% Stake Via Multibillion Deal
The deal may prove to be one of the most direct challenges to industry leader Nvidia
Shares of AI chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices are in the spotlight on Monday, after the company announced a multibillion-dollar partnership with Sam Altman's OpenAI to collaborate on artificial intelligence data centres.
AMD's stock price surged a sharp 31% to $215.62 on the back of this development, as of 7:20 p.m. IST. The deal could see Altman acquire a 10% stake in the chipmaker, which may prove to be one of the most direct challenges to industry leader Nvidia. Nvidia's premarket share price was trading marginally in the red at the same hour.
OpenAI plans to deploy six gigawatts of AMD's Instinct GPUs over several years and across multiple hardware generations, the companies announced. The partnership will begin with a 1-gigawatt deployment in the second half of 2026.
As part of the deal, AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant to purchase up to 160 million shares of its common stock. The first tranche will vest upon completion of the initial 1-gigawatt rollout, with additional tranches unlocking as OpenAI scales to six gigawatts and hits key technical and commercial milestones necessary for large-scale deployment.
If fully exercised, the warrant would give OpenAI roughly a 10% stake in AMD, based on the chipmaker's current number of outstanding shares.
"AMD's leadership in high-performance chips will enable us to accelerate progress and bring the benefits of advanced AI to everyone faster," OpenAI CEO Altman said in a statement announcing the agreement.
The deal positions AMD as a key strategic partner for OpenAI and represents one of the largest GPU procurement agreements in the AI industry to date.
The move comes just two weeks after OpenAI finalised a landmark $100 billion equity-and-supply agreement with Nvidia. In contrast to the AMD arrangement, that deal saw Nvidia taking an ownership stake in OpenAI.
"This is a true win-win enabling the world's most ambitious AI buildout and advancing the entire AI ecosystem," AMD CEO Lisa Su said.
