NVIDIA ships its much-awaited Blackwell AI Chips to OpenAI, Microsoft

On October 8, OpenAI announced via X that its team received the first engineering builds of Nvidia’s DGX B200. These new builds promise three times faster training speeds and fifteen times greater inference performance than previous models.

Contrary to tradition, this time, the technical team, rather than the founders, received the first GPU chip, with Sam Altman notably absent. 

When OpenAI was newly founded as a research non-profit, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, personally delivered the first GPU chip to Elon Musk, one of the founders. Earlier this year, Huang delivered the first NVIDIA DGX H200 to OpenAI’s founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. With the recent change in leadership with senior leaders like Mira Murati and others leaving OpenAI, many opine that this is the start of a new era. 

On similar lines, Microsoft shared that its Azure platform is the first cloud to employ Nvidia’s Blackwell system, featuring AI servers powered by the GB200. “Our long-standing partnership with NVIDIA and deep innovation continues to lead the industry, powering the most sophisticated AI workloads,” said Satya Nadela, Microsoft's CEO. 

Hints about these developments emerged earlier this year, with NVIDIA reporting a record  $22.6 billion in data centre revenue, marking a 23% sequential increase and a staggering 427% year-on-year growth. It was driven by continued strong demand for the NVIDIA Hopper GPU computing platform. During the company’s earnings call, Huang mentioned that "after Blackwell, there’s another chip. We’re on a one-year rhythm."

OpenAI’s Changing Relationship with Microsoft 

Microsoft was one of the early investors in OpenAI, and it had a significant influence over the organisation. However, according to an exclusive report by The Information, OpenAI is now exploring avenues to partner with competitors like Oracle to meet its growing demand for computer power. This move could help OpenAI gain control over its data centre plans and maintain an edge over Anthropic and xAI, which are not tied to a single cloud provider. Simultaneously, Microsoft actively seeks to reduce its dependency on OpenAI’s technologies, reflecting a shift in the dynamics between the two companies following OpenAI’s recent funding round.