NEW YORK – OpenAI is working with Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to build its first in-house chip designed to support its artificial intelligence (AI) systems, while adding AMD chips alongside Nvidia chips to meet its surging infrastructure demands, sources told Reuters.
OpenAI, the fast-growing company behind ChatGPT, has examined a range of options to diversify chip supply and reduce costs. OpenAI considered building everything in-house and raising capital for an expensive plan to build a network of factories, known as foundries, for chip manufacturing.
The company has dropped the ambitious foundry plans for now due to the cost and time needed to build a network, and plans instead to focus on in-house chip design efforts, according to sources, who requested anonymity as they were not authorised to discuss private matters.
The company’s strategy highlights how the Silicon Valley start-up is leveraging industry partnerships and a mix of internal and external approaches to secure chip supply and manage costs like larger rivals Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft.
As one of the largest buyers of chips, OpenAI’s decision to source from a diverse array of chipmakers while developing its customised chip could have broader tech sector implications.
Broadcom stock jumped on Oct 29 following the report, closing up over 4.5 per cent, while AMD shares ended the day up 3.7 per cent.
OpenAI, which helped commercialise generative AI that produces human-like responses to queries, relies on substantial computing power to train and run its systems. As one of the largest purchasers of Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), OpenAI uses AI chips both to train models where the AI learns from data and for inference, applying AI to make predictions or decisions based on new information.
OpenAI has been working for months with Broadcom to build its first