OpenAI has entered a sweeping, multi-year partnership with semiconductor leader Broadcom to design and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom-built AI accelerators and systems. The collaboration marks the first time OpenAI has moved decisively into the hardware space, signalling a major strategic shift toward vertical integration of its AI ecosystem.
Announced in October 2025, the partnership will see OpenAI design the accelerators and systems while Broadcom takes charge of their development and deployment. The rollout is expected to begin in the second half of 2026 and conclude by the end of 2029, establishing one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects to date.
OpenAI says the collaboration will enable the company to integrate its model and software expertise directly into the chips that power its products.
“Partnering with Broadcom is a critical step in building the infrastructure needed to unlock AI’s potential and deliver real benefits for people and businesses,” said Sam Altman, Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.
“Developing our own accelerators adds to the broader ecosystem of partners all building the capacity required to push the frontier of AI to provide benefits to all humanity.”
This strategic move reflects OpenAI’s growing ambition to reduce dependence on external chip suppliers like NVIDIA and AMD, whose GPUs currently dominate the AI compute market. By developing its own hardware, OpenAI aims to achieve greater control over cost, performance, and scalability — particularly as its models become more computationally demanding.
OpenAI’s Co-founder and President Greg Brockman said the collaboration will drive the next wave of breakthroughs in AI by aligning hardware and model development more closely than ever before.
“Our collaboration with Broadcom will power breakthroughs in AI and bring the technology’s full potential closer to reality,” Brockman said.
“By building our own chip, we can embed what we’ve learned from creating frontier models and products directly into the hardware, unlocking new levels of capability and intelligence.”
For Broadcom, the partnership strengthens its foothold in the AI semiconductor space a rapidly expanding sector where demand for high-performance, energy-efficient chips continues to outpace supply.
Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom, described the partnership as a historic milestone for both companies.
“Broadcom’s collaboration with OpenAI signifies a pivotal moment in the pursuit of artificial general intelligence,” he said.
“OpenAI has been in the forefront of the AI revolution since the ChatGPT moment, and we are thrilled to co-develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of next-generation accelerators and network systems to pave the way for the future of AI.”
The collaboration will also leverage Broadcom’s deep expertise in connectivity and semiconductor design. Charlie Kawwas, Ph.D., President of Broadcom’s Semiconductor Solutions Group, said the partnership represents a new benchmark for AI infrastructure design.
“Our partnership with OpenAI continues to set new industry benchmarks for the design and deployment of open, scalable and power-efficient AI clusters,” he said.
“Custom accelerators combine remarkably well with standards-based Ethernet scale-up and scale-out networking solutions to provide cost and performance optimized next-generation AI infrastructure.”
“The racks include Broadcom’s end-to-end portfolio of Ethernet, PCIe and optical connectivity solutions, reaffirming our AI infrastructure portfolio leadership.”
The collaboration comes at a time when the AI industry is rapidly evolving toward bespoke hardware to meet the growing demands of generative and large-scale language models. Tech giants including Google, Amazon, and Meta have all developed in-house chips to tailor compute performance to their AI workloads and OpenAI’s move brings it into that competitive tier.
Analysts have noted that by controlling both model architecture and underlying hardware, OpenAI could gain efficiency advantages and accelerate model training and inference cycles. However, the scale of the 10 GW project comparable to powering millions of homes also highlights the massive energy and logistical challenges facing the AI sector.
Despite those challenges, both companies view the partnership as an essential step toward the next phase of AI progress. OpenAI said the effort aims to ensure that “advances in AI models are reflected directly in advances in compute” bridging the gap between intelligence and infrastructure.
If successful, the OpenAI–Broadcom collaboration could reshape the AI landscape by aligning hardware innovation with the rapid evolution of AI models — a fusion that may define the industry’s next frontier.
