Revolution in AI — OpenAI prepares its own chip by 2026

The Artificial Intelligence company OpenAI is actively working on the development of its own AI chip. By creating it, the company will be able to reduce its dependence on NVIDIA in the supply of semiconductors.

Reuters reported it.

As noted, OpenAI has almost completed the development of the first generation of its own chip and plans to transfer it to TSMC for production in the near future.

OpenAI sees the chip as a strategic tool

The company plans to start mass production in 2026, which is in line with its ambitious timeline. The process of manufacturing the first batch takes about six months and can cost tens of millions of dollars. If OpenAI decides to speed up production, the costs will increase significantly. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the first version of the chip will work flawlessly, which may require redesign.

Inside OpenAI, this project is seen as a tool to strengthen its negotiating position with chip suppliers. The company plans to expand the functionality of its own processors in the next generations.

If the test production is successful, OpenAI will be able to launch mass production of its own chips and test an alternative to NVIDIA’s solutions this year.

Experts estimate that the development of a large-scale chip could cost USD 500 million for just one version, and the full range of software and related infrastructure could double these costs.

The first OpenAI chip will be capable of both training and executing AI models, but in the initial stages it will be used mainly for their operation, the sources note. Its role in the company’s overall infrastructure will be limited.

For a large-scale expansion of the OpenAI development program, hundreds more engineers will need to be involved.

As a reminder, Elon Musk made an offer of USD 97.4 billion to acquire the non-profit organization that controls OpenAI. The company’s CEO Sam Altman has already responded to the billionaire’s offer in a joking form on X.

We also wrote that OpenAI introduced a new feature for ChatGPT which allowed Artificial Intelligence to work autonomously, planning and executing multi-stage research.