OpenAI has signed a multibillion-dollar agreement to buy computing capacity from startup Cerebras Systems as it races to secure more power for its fast-growing AI services, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Under the deal, OpenAI will purchase up to 750 megawatts of computing capacity over three years, worth more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The company plans to use Cerebras-designed chips to run its ChatGPT models, seeking faster and more efficient alternatives to processors from Nvidia.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a personal investor in Cerebras, and the two companies previously explored a partnership in 2017. OpenAI executives say the company faces a severe shortage of computing resources as it serves more than 900 million weekly users.
Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman said the deal was driven by demand for faster inference computing, where a trained AI model is given new data to process.
OpenAI infrastructure executive Sachin Katti told the paper that revenue growth has closely tracked the company’s expanding compute capacity.
The agreement adds to OpenAI’s recent chip and cloud deals with Broadcom, AMD, and major cloud providers as it prepares for its next phase of growth.