That there has just been a sea change in the world of supercomputing and AI. AMD and OpenAI have announced a multi-year, multi-phase strategic partnership to deploy up to 6 Gigawatts of AMD’s powerful Instinct GPUs to power OpenAI’s next-gen AI infrastructure. The first deployment of new, future AMD Instinct MI450 series chips is scheduled for the second half of 2026, kickstarting this massive collaboration.
That should be a huge announcement for AMD. OpenAI, a decentralized research company regarded as one of the preeminent forces driving AI infrastructure and advancing the capability of generative AI, will leverage current and next-generation AMD Instinct accelerators. The breadth of the agreement spans the deployment of up to 6 Gigawatts of A.I capabilities — meaning a dramatically deep commitment to AMD’s hardware ecosystem. The pact also sets a clear timeline for when we can expect the next-gen MI400 series accelerators to roll out, including the much-anticipated Instinct MI450.
These exact GPUs will first be deployed at OpenAI in the second half of 2026 — and will be a watershed moment for both companies. The next-gen AMD Instinct MI450 will be an absolute monster with up to 40 PFLOPs of AI compute, a staggering 432 GB of HBM4 = insane bandwidth (19.6 TB/s demolishing NVIDIA). To put the scale and ambition of OpenAI compute needs into perspective, look at the the AMD Instinct MI450 specifications MACHINE. This whole, huge 6 Gigawatt infrastructure will also include other leading Instinct AI series accelerators, such as the MI300 and future MI350 series, making the Citadel a very solid multi-generational architecture direction for OpenAI.
The far-reaching agreement establishes OpenAI as one of AMD’s central strategic compute partners The partnership is expected to accelerate high-volume installations of AMD technology beginning with the AMD Instinct MI450 series and spanning future generations and rack-scale AI solutions. This collaborative announcement expands on AMD and OpenAI’s multi-generational hardware and software partnership that was initiated with the MI300X and further extended with MI350X series. These similarities in product roadmaps produce an actual win-win win-win, allowing truly enormous AI deployments to make use of the AMD Instinct MI450 while massively upgrading the AI ecosystem as a whole.
That said, Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO of AMD, pointed out the enormity of this partnership:
“We are excited to partner with OpenAI to provide AI compute at scale. “This collaboration is a perfect win-win bringing together the best of AMD and the best of OpenAI to enable the world’s most ambitious AI buildout and expand the entire AI ecosystem.”
OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman reflected the same, saying: This partnership is a landmark in creating the compute capacity required to turn truly integrated AI into a reality. Their leadership in high-performance chips will help us move faster to make the benefits of AI more widely available for all. Having AMD in their corner will allow us to scale to provide AI that serves everyone, everywhere — Greg Brockman, Co-Founder and President, OpenAI
The editorial team behind this publication has been covering the semiconductor and AI compute market for a decade or more, lending a high-level of domain expertise and competitive landscape knowledge into the technological trends that brought us the AMD Instinct MI450. ContentsHow to cast those arrowsAMD’s eyeglass announcements todayOpenAI antimatterWhat we know from AMD and OpenAI here
Additionally, to align strategic interests, AMD has issued OpenAI a warrant to purchase up to 160 million shares of AMD common stock. This warrant is designed to be vested upon the achievement of certain milestones, whereby the first tranche will vest upon the first 1 gigawatt (1 gigawatt) deployment that includes the AMD Instinct MI450.
This financial alignment links the success of OpenAI’s AI infrastructure, which is complemented by the AMD Instinct MI450, directly with long-term shareholder value for AMD. The partnership is expected to generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for AMD, and being highly accretive to AMD’s non-GAAP earnings-per-share, confirming the sheer financial and strategic significance of the AMD Instinct MI450 deal according to AMD EVP, CFO and treasurer Jean Hu.
With this landmark deployment of the AMD Instinct MI450 that will be followed up by generations of Instinct chips, AMD and OpenAI are laying the foundation to satisfy the world hunger for unimaginably rapid AI compute capability, establishing a critical component of high-performance and AI computing well into the years to come.
