Nvidia shares are down after report that its OpenAI investment stalled

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/02/nvidia-stock-price-openai-funding.html

by greatgib • 6 months ago

158 30 6 months ago

cnbc.com

ecommerceguy• 6 months ago

Possibly good for Nvidia as I have doubts OpenAI will be able to pay their massive IOUs in a timely fashion, if ever.

Did Oracle spin off Cerner yet?

DontchaKnowit• 6 months ago

What do you mean by spin off?

u1hcw9nx• 6 months ago

You would think the effect was the opposite. I think this is worse for OpenAI.

So far, the circular financing from Nvidia has been peanuts for the company. It's roughly equal to giving 5% discount on hardware, not a big deal when the profit margin is 70%. Trying to prop up new neoclouds and competition is a good idea.

As I understand it, the OpenAI investment was much bigger effective discount but still safe because Nvidia invests gradually in installments only when OpenAI invests in data centers: tit for tat. Maybe OpenAI wanted to get the money now and invest it later, as they seem to be running out of cash.

embedding-shape• 6 months ago

You would think the effect was the opposite. I think this is worse for OpenAI.

How do we know it wasn't? OpenAI isn't a publicly traded company, and I guess no one who dares writing anything here actually knows how the numbers look on the inside, so for what we know, it could very well have been worse for OpenAI than Nvidia.

observationist• 6 months ago

You can make a good guess, though - OpenAI had a significant lead, its moat was being a generation or 2 ahead of the competition, and as of the end of 2025, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and Anthropic are pretty much neck and neck. Grok and Gemini are likely to be the top 2 within the next couple months, and the Chinese open models are hot on their heels.

OpenAI is going to be competing for third or fourth place with Anthropic unless one of them pulls off a big capabilities or efficiency leap while remaining believably as good as the other top models. Google and xAI have advantages that the others don't, and are capitalizing on them like crazy. It remains to be seen whether xAI can compete with the Google hardware advantage, but they have economies of scale, differences in mission, and Elon's billions on their side, so it's turning out to be a very interesting race.

Sama could also finagle a funding rabbit or strategic partnership out of his hat and also have the next top tier model, amazing everyone again and keeping a plausible "best in class" lead for a while; OpenAI would have to be down for at least a year before I counted it out completely. It's not looking very pretty for them right now, though.

dktp• 6 months ago

My best guess is that Nvidia is unhappy with how OpenAI is fishing for compute with its competitors (Jensen had some opinions on the AMD-OpenAI deal when it was announced). If this actually becomes a feasible reality, it gives OpenAI (and co) negotiating power - which is bad for Nvidia

Nvidia might have wanted more exclusivity/attachment. And OpenAI still seems to have no problem raising money. So maybe there was just a commitment mismatch

Pure speculation though

themafia• 6 months ago

the circular financing from Nvidia has been peanuts for the company.

Enron thought the same thing. Until they had a closer look at what their middle managers were actually doing to the books.

mgh2• 6 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46865317

fsckboy• 6 months ago

It's roughly equal to giving 5% discount on hardware, not a big deal when the profit margin is 70%.

using your numbers, Nvidia didn't drop 70%, it's more on the order of the 5% so at least from that angle, the news narrative holds together superficially.

whalesalad• 6 months ago

How long after the collapse of OpenAI will the DDR situation come back to normal.

luqtas• 6 months ago

hopefully never, so we just have to run cheap screens connected to AI servers /j

spicyusername• 6 months ago

Down to levels as low as where they were a few days ago, lol

zmmmmm• 6 months ago

the hit to microsoft the other day was pretty interesting

I saw reports attributing it to a miss on earnings from Azure but they were off by 0.4% on 39% growth. That's 39% instead of 39.4%. And the company stock dropped 10%. This is all of Microsoft - 10% down (!).

It has to tell you there are a LOT of people primed to sell in a hurry on bad news. The "bubble" talk subsided a lot after nVidia smashed earnings last quarter, but largely overlooked how much their whole situation is based on pent up demand. It completely masks the fundamentals.

I still feel like we're sitting on a volcano and seeing puffs of smoke and feeling earth tremors.

fullshark• 6 months ago

The intense race to dump the risk on the public and cash out (OpenAI ipo, Musk folding xAI into SpaceX for that IPO) is very telling.

raw_anon_11112• 6 months ago

The same thing that YC does…

https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-...

tizzzzz• 6 months ago

Absolutely. What we’re seeing is a familiar pattern in tech: when things go well, the rewards are private, but when the risks build up—whether financial, regulatory, or technical—they get socialized onto the public. IPOs become a way to offload responsibility, recapitalize, and let early stakeholders cash out while passing long-term uncertainties to a broader set of investors and the market itself.

spacephysics• 6 months ago

As I understand it, it was in part about their Azure miss more about capital expenditure and market anxiety around their OpenAI investment ROI.

Also a portion of their Azure spend was some clever accounting they did if memory serves me

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsofts-historic-plunge-why...

SilverElfin• 6 months ago

I thought this was already revised? Jensen Huang said they’ll be investing more than ever:

Nvidia is likely set to make its “largest ever investment” in ChatGPT firm OpenAI, despite reports that the deal may be under threat in recent weeks. The chip giant’s CEO, Jensen Huang, didn’t say exactly how big the investment would be, but said it would be “nothing like” the $100 billion figure mentioned in the September partnership agreement.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidia-ceo-well-make-our-largest-...

SunlitCat• 6 months ago

The “largest ever investment” remark felt less like confidence and more like a “nothing to see here, move along” PR reflex.

georgeecollins• 6 months ago

I think it would be healthy for everyone if the hype around this stuff would die down a bit. There's too much pressure to invest in hardware and too much uncertainty around the business case. I am excited to see what can be built but I hope a bunch of people don't have to get wiped out financially along the way.

Nvidia shares are down after report that its OpenAI investment stalled

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