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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: Surprised AMD gave away 10% of the company in 'clever' OpenAI deal

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that he’s surprised Advanced Micro Devices offered 10% of itself to OpenAI as part of a multibillion-dollar partnership announced earlier this week.

“It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next generation product,” Huang said in an interview with “CNBC’s Squawk Box.” “I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it’s clever, I guess.”

OpenAI and AMD reached a deal on Monday, with OpenAI committing to purchase 6 gigawatts worth of AMD chips over multiple years, including its forthcoming MI450 series. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, with vesting milestones based on deployment volume and AMD’s share price.

If OpenAI exercises the full warrant, the company could acquire roughly 10% ownership in AMD.

AMD shares have soared since the announcement and were up 5% Wednesday, rising a staggering 35% so far this week. Nvidia shares were nearly 3% higher on Wednesday following Huang’s comments.

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The deal challenges Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip industry, a market where AMD has sought to catch up, alongside cloud providers which are developing their own chips.

Nvidia late last month announced it planned to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI over the next decade. OpenAI agreed to build and deploy Nvidia systems that require 10 gigawatts of power, which Huang said at the time of the announcement is equal to between 4 million and 5 million graphics processing units (GPUs).

Huang said the investment is “very different” from OpenAI’s deal with AMD in that it allows Nvidia to sell directly to the ChatGPT creator.

Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI has underscored concerns about the “circular nature” of some AI infrastructure deals.

Asked how OpenAI will fund the deal with Nvidia, Huang said, “They don’t have the money yet.”

“They’re going to have to raise that money through, first of all, their revenues, which is growing exponentially, equity or debt,” Huang said. “They gave us the opportunity to invest alongside other investors when the time comes.”

Huang added that after Nvidia previously invested in OpenAI, his “only regret is that we didn’t invest more.”

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Oct. 8th, 2025.

CNBC

Huang also confirmed Nvidia’s involvement in xAI’s latest funding round, in which Elon Musk’s AI startup is reportedly seeking to raise about $20 billion, according to Bloomberg. He said he’s “super excited” about the financing opportunity, adding that he wishes he could give Musk more money.

“Almost everything that Elon is part of, you really want to be part of as well,” Huang said.

Nvidia has also backed AI data center operator CoreWeave, which Huang said he considers one of several “terrific investments” made by the company recently.

“[They’re] really special companies, and they’re building, they’re part of our ecosystem building out the AI infrastructure for the world,” Huang said.

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

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October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” 

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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Apple isn’t playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

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October 30, 2025

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Apple isn't playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

While many of the largest tech companies race to build massive data centers for their artificial intelligence ambitions, Apple is taking a more modest approach.

Instead of simply buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple buys computing capacity from outside partners, finance chief Kevan Parekh explained Thursday on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

When Apple does build servers for its AI software, the company is using its own chips — not those from Nvidia or AMD — to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute.

“I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we leverage both first-party capacity as well as leverage third-party capacity,” Parekh said.

Apple’s results on Thursday closed out a busy week of earnings for the tech industry. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta reported on Wednesday, while Amazon reported on Thursday.

All of the companies said they planned to boost spending on capital expenditures to secure the computing capacity needed to develop next-generation AI and serve users.

Alphabet said it expects to spend about $92 billion on capital expenditures this year. Microsoft said it spent about $34.9 billion on capex during the September quarter and will spend more in capex for its fiscal 2026 than it did the year prior.

Meta stock got whacked after CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s plan to spend about $71 billion on AI chips and other expenses in 2025. On Thursday, Amazon raised its 2025 spending forecast 6% to $125 billion.

Compared to them, Apple’s barely spending at all.

In its fiscal 2025, which ended in September, Apple spent $12.72 billion on capital expenditures.

And yet, that’s up 35% from what it spent last year, a significant increase. Parekh said Apple is expecting further increases. Analysts expect Apple’s capex to increase to $14.3 billion this year, according to FactSet.

“In ’25 we did have capex costs associated with building out our Private Cloud Compute environment in our first party data centers,” Parekh said. Earlier this month, Apple announced that it was starting to ship those servers from a factory in Houston.

Last year, the company released Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools that runs on the company’s chips that can summarize notifications, generate images like new emojis, and pass complicated queries to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple Intelligence has received mixed reviews from critics, and one of its centerpieces, an improved Siri assistant, was delayed by the company in May until 2026. The improved Siri is on track to come out next year, Apple said Thursday.

But if Apple’s decision to take a different approach to AI puts the company’s hardware sales at risk, it hasn’t happened yet.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that the consumer response to the company’s iPhone 17 models was “off the chart,” and the company said that overall sales would rise between 10% and 12% in the company’s December quarter. Apple executives were effusive on a call with analysts about the new iPhone’s popularity.

Still, Apple executives are aware that that AI features like Apple Intelligence are a factor in smartphone purchasing decisions.

“We’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” Cook said.

Apple’s “hybrid” approach means that some of what the company spends on compute for AI ends up as an operating expense, instead of a capital expense. Analysts pressed Apple executives that the company’s operating expenses rose 11% in the past year to $15.91 billion.

“We are increasing our investments in AI, while also continuing to invest in our product roadmap,” Parekh said. “The vast majority of the increase to our operating expenses are driven by R&D.”

WATCH: Apple will outperform Amazon from tomorrow to end of year, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster

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