Sept 22 (Reuters) - Chipmaker Nvidia will

invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, the companies said on

Monday, a tie-up between two of the highest profile leaders in

the global artificial intelligence race.

Companies worldwide are pouring hundreds of billions of

dollars into securing and expanding capacity for powerful cloud

computing required to develop and power complex AI technology.

The two companies signed a letter of intent for a landmark

strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia ( NVDA )

chips for OpenAI's AI infrastructure.

They aim to finalize partnership details in the coming

weeks, with the first deployment phase targeted to come online

in the second half of 2026.

"Everything starts with compute," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

said in a statement.

"Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the

economy of the future, and we will utilize what we're building

with Nvidia ( NVDA ) to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower

people and businesses with them at scale."

Nvidia ( NVDA ) shares were up 3% while shares of Oracle

, which partners with OpenAI, SoftBank, and

Microsoft ( MSFT ) on the $500 billion Stargate AI data center

project, gained nearly 5%.

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) investment comes days after it committed $5 billion

to struggling chipmaker Intel ( INTC ).

OpenAI and its backer Microsoft ( MSFT ) also announced earlier this

month that they have signed a non-binding deal for new

relationship terms that would allow for OpenAI's restructuring

into a for-profit company.

Nvidia ( NVDA ) also backed OpenAI in a $6.6 billion funding round in

October 2024. The world's most valuable firm making another

sizeable investment in OpenAI could lead to antitrust scrutiny.

The Trump administration has taken a much lighter touch on

competition issues compared to President Biden's antitrust

enforcers.

In June 2024 the Justice Department and the Federal Trade

Commission reached a deal that cleared the way for potential

antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft ( MSFT ),

OpenAI and Nvidia ( NVDA ) play in the artificial intelligence industry.