NVIDIA Halts $100B OpenAI Investment as Jensen Huang Questions Business Discipline

NVIDIA has paused plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI after internal doubts emerged about the deal, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Collapse

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has privately emphasized to industry associates that the original $100 billion agreement was non-binding and not finalized. More critically, Huang has privately criticized what he describes as a “lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach.”

Original Deal vs. New Terms

What Changed

Huang has expressed concern about:

• Competition from Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude
• OpenAI’s projected $14B losses in 2026
• The path to profitability amid massive infrastructure costs

Other Investors Circling

Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion and expand an existing compute agreement. OpenAI is targeting a $100 billion round at an $830 billion valuation.

The Strategic Context

This development fits the pattern we identified in our analysis of Microsoft’s Frontier AI Dilemma: OpenAI is building infrastructure independence across multiple providers (AWS $38B, Oracle $300B, Stargate $500B), but that independence comes at a cost — partners are questioning whether the economics work.

When your primary compute supplier expresses doubts about your business model, it signals deeper concerns about the frontier AI economics that extend beyond any single partnership.

Source: Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal. For strategic analysis of OpenAI’s business challenges, read OpenAI’s Hardest Business Model Pivot Yet on The Business Engineer.