Although early announcements in September suggested that NVIDIA would invest heavily and quickly in OpenAI, uncertainty around the deal remains. Speaking at the UBS Global Technology and AI Conference in Arizona, NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress stated that the agreement is still only a letter of intent, and the company has not signed any final documentation.
Under the original terms, the arrangement was supposed to include a roughly $100 billion investment and the delivery of computing systems providing at least 10 gigawatts of compute capacity. According to sources, the structural assumptions have not changed — but the overall climate surrounding the deal has.
Kress also emphasized that the anticipated hardware deliveries for OpenAI are not reflected in NVIDIA’s current sales commitments. For months, NVIDIA has been reporting a rapidly growing order backlog — estimated by analysts to reach as much as $500 billion by 2026 — and a finalized deal with OpenAI would further inflate those numbers. The CFO noted that for contracts of this magnitude, a significant portion of the process involves detailed planning of production capacity, which inherently slows down the signing of a final agreement.
The update comes at a time of increasing criticism of massive AI “megadeals.” Some analysts describe them as circular deals — situations in which both sides benefit from rising valuations because they collectively fuel demand for each other’s products. The fact that the NVIDIA–OpenAI contract still lacks a finalized agreement may raise concerns about the stability of this model and whether companies will be able to maintain investment momentum if the market begins demanding clearer paths to returns.
Regulatory pressure is also mounting. In both the United States and the European Union, debates continue over whether multi-billion-dollar investments in AI infrastructure — often supported by public funds or significantly affecting the energy market — should be subject to stricter oversight. It remains unclear whether deals of the scale envisioned between NVIDIA and OpenAI will even be possible in the near future without the approval of key government authorities.
