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Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer
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Bloomberg Tech Host
AMD has signed a definitive agreement with Open air to deploy 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs. AMD says it will equate to tens of billions of dollars in revenue. Open AI will get up to 160 million AMD shares in tranches and set against both operational and financial milestones. The focus is inference. Let's bring in AMD CEO Lisa Su and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Both of them join us on set here at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco. Good morning.
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Lisa Su
Good morning. Great to see you.
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Greg Brockman
Good to be here.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Let's frame the opportunity. Lisa, you know, the market reaction is very clear. But for AMD and the AI industry at large, what do you think this represents?
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Lisa Su
Well, look, this is a huge milestone for amd. You know, we are so thrilled with the partnership with the Open Air team. And it's also, you know, a huge moment for the AI industry because, you know, when you get to the right down to it, you need more AI compute. I mean, that's where we are today. COMPUTE is the foundation for all of the intelligence we can get from AI. And, you know, we are a compute provider. We have spent years on our roadmap. We've spent years working with OpenAI and, and the team. And, you know, together now we're embarking on, you know, a massive build out of 6 gigawatts of AI compute. And it's a big deal for us, for our shareholders, for our teams, and for really, you know, the partnership and the overall ecosystem.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Greg, I said the top. The focus is inference. I think that's really important to be specific about what you will do with this capacity. So to literally explain that part. And I'm conscious that, you know, in the first instance, the first target is 1 gigawatt and then eventually 6 gigawatts. But what will you use it for?
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Greg Brockman
Well, I think that the world continues to underestimate the amount of demand for AI computer, right. That just we've seen this explosion of demand with things like chat, CBT. You know, we're at 800 million weekly active users now. This product didn't even exist three years ago. And we're in a position where we cannot launch features we cannot launch new products simply because of lack of computational power. And we see these models continuing to get exponentially better. And I think we're just heading to a world where so much of the economy is going to be lifted up and driven by progress in AI. And so we're very much heading to a world by default that I think looks like a compute desert. Right. That there's just not enough compute to go around. And so we're trying to build as much as possible as quickly as possible. So we're starting with one gigawatt simply because you got to start somewhere.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Right.
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Greg Brockman
But honestly, we're building as fast as we possibly can and trying to bring as much computational power to bear for the economy, for the world.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
Lisa, this is such a big commitment to instinct in particular as a customer. Does it make Open Air the largest for that particular product?
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Lisa Su
Well, this is certainly the largest deployment that we have announced by far. I mean, you know, 6 gigawatts of compute. As Greg said, we're going to start with the first gigawatt in the second half of 2026 on our new next generation, my 450 chip. I think the thing to understand is, you know, these types of partnerships actually take, you know, years to really get comfortable with the idea that we're going to go all in together. And this is an all in partnership in terms of building out the AI compute that Open Air needs for everything that they're offering to the world. So, yes, it's a huge deal and it also says a lot about, you know, how much needs to come together for this entire ecosystem to operate. So, you know, we are setting up, you know, certainly there's a lot of engineering work, but our teams are working together on hardware, software, we're ensuring the supply chain. All of those elements are set up and ready to deliver on this massive commitment.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
Greg, talk us through a little bit about the players that you need to also lean on. This has been years in the making, as you say, with amd, but what other cloud providers are involved? How are you thinking about this working with an Oracle or others out there?
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Greg Brockman
Yeah, we really think of this as an industry wide effort and in general we think that compute is something that does require the entire supply chain to really wake up and to really start building much more than people were planning on. I think this starts from energy to try to get far more power to be built. Things like nuclear I think are going to be very important to come online. The cloud providers are an important part of this as well. So we're going to be deploying AMD in our own data centers. We'll be deploying them together with, with cloud providers. You know, we have a deal with Oracle, lots of other cloud providers out there. You can really see that we're very much in the, we just want compute, as much compute as possible. We think this is important for the economy, we think this is important for the nation, we think this is important for humanity. And so really we're working with everyone in this whole industry in order to, to get as much compute power online as quickly as we can.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Lisa, I'm sorry, specifics, where is this data center going to be? Is it one single site? Is this Oracle that will partner with you on this?
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Lisa Su
Well, actually, what this really is is an announcement of what, you know, AMD and Open Air are going to do together. You know, OpenAI has a lot of partners in terms of, you know, where they deploy. I imagine a lot of it will be in cloud service providers. It's really up to, you know, OpenAI and Greg and Sam and the team. But the way to think about it is for this amount of compute, it's going to have to be in a lot of different places. I mean, it's a massive amount of locations, multiple locations, I would imagine, you know, multiple providers to really get this online as fast as possible.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Greg, there is a lot of focus on where Open Air is going to get the money from to fund all of this. Sam Altman's big picture commitment is well documented. Right. And the numbers to his mind are in the trillions. But have you specifically thought about debt financing for this relationship with amd? Have you thought about doing a specific equity raise? You are very committed across multiple projects.
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Greg Brockman
Yeah, look, the way that I was, the way that I would look at this is that AI revenue is growing faster than I think, almost any product in history. And that ultimately, at the end of the day, the reason this compute power is so important, is so worthwhile for everyone to build is because the revenue ultimately will be there. Now, as a company that is trying to move as fast as we can, we look at everything right, we look at equity, debt, we look at trying to find creative ways of financing. All of this that's been actually a huge focus of us for the past couple of years is thinking about how can we possibly build the amount of compute that is required in order to really transform this whole economy into an AI powered economy. And so I think you'll see lots of creative ideas. But fundamentally, I think at the end of the day it is because we believe.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
I'm sorry to jump in and interrupt and carry. Just forgive me on this one. The condition of AMD issuing the stock to Open AI requires you to spend money, basically because you have to deliver that gigawatt of capacity first. Lisa, I have to ask you if you have assurances that Open Air is good for it.
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Lisa Su
Well, let me be clear. I mean, this deal is a win for AMD, it's a win for OpenAI, and it's a win for our shareholders. And that's kind of the way we put this together. I have full confidence in, you know, OpenAI. Sam, Greg, Sarah, I mean, this is a massive opportunity for us right now right here. It's about who has the most compute and how fast can we get it online. And we're committing to doing this together. And the fact is, as OpenAI buys chips that's great for AMD, our revenue goes up, our earnings go up. You know, we expect that it will also be very, very accretive to, to our shareholders from day one. And as we do that, you know, we're very happy to have Open Air as a deep partner and we win together. So it's like a virtuous positive cycle in how we build out, you know, this big vision for having all this compute out there.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Right.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
And yet we still question, as you were just talking about, Greg, some of the other supply chain elements. You talk about the need for nuclear, for power. What's really interesting is we. Are you feeling confident enough about the rest of the compute, the supply chain? Is there, is this going to be US manufactured from your perspective, or are you looking at also building out internationally with amd?
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Greg Brockman
Yeah, we've, we've been looking at really all options, our preference and really the, the core thing that we tried to do is build as much as possible in the US and you can see the commitments that we've made over the past year, you know, $500 billion of investment in the US and that's not stopping. We're continuing to build. I do think that international, that there, it is also going to be important for the world to have compute. They think that computer is going to become this like national security strategic resource. And every country is going to need computational power. And so that we are really not limiting our, our sort of sites in terms of where to build. But we do think it is important that the US Leads in this technology leads in computational power and we're expanding the supply chain. But you can see that we've really been working with partners across the globe in order to actually meet the demand that we expect to be coming in upcoming years.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
Lisa, the manufacturing of these chips, will you look to intel at all for it, do you think, in the future?
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Lisa Su
Well, as you know, the supply chain is something that we work on, you know, very, very meticulously. I think we have a very strong supply chain and we're certainly deeply partnered with TSMC across the supply chain. You know, just to that earlier question, we're absolutely prioritizing building in the United States because I think that's super important. This is the, the U.S. stack. We want to have as much of it in the US as possible. And, you know, we continue to really look at, you know, how do we ensure that there will be a strong supply chain, you know, going forward.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Greg Sam posted on X that this deal with AMD is incremental to what's already being done with Nvidia. But as Lisa knows, I've spent quite a lot of time looking at the MI family and the newer generations of products to come. Is there a very clear, specific benefit to using AMD technology for inference relative to the capabilities of Nvidia, or do you just see it broadly as some sort of diversifying factor?
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Greg Brockman
Well, I would look at it this way, that there's a huge, huge fixed cost to getting AI models running on any platform. And so that when we look at what's out there, that actually getting AI training to work is a huge, huge amount of lift. That's something we've really only done the work for Nvidia, but for inference, that that's something that's much more that there's a easier barrier to entry there. And one thing we found is that I think that the work that Lisa and team have been doing on the Mi 450 Series I, it's looking like it's going to be a really incredible chip. I think that, that there's. The way that these things work is there's niches for different balances of memory and computational power. And so as we have a diversity of workloads, we're finding that having a diversity of chips also really accelerates what we're able to do.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Lisa, at the beginning of this conversation, I said there are both operational and financial milestones to be met. And Greg, explain. You got to start somewhere. So in the first instance, one gigawatt, but would you just sort of draw out the pathway to that first gigawatt? You know, it seems like you're prepared to move quickly here.
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Lisa Su
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe, Ed, if I can just build on something that Greg said. I think he's absolutely right. You know, we're a believer in there's a diversity of workloads and there will be a diversity of workloads across, you know, customers, models, use cases. And from that standpoint, you know, we feel really good about, about how we're positioned. You know, we, we love the work here because, you know, frankly, you know, OpenAI is the ultimate power user of our chips and tests us in very good ways. So I think that's, that's what gives us confidence that, you know, the technology is there. And then to your point about milestones, Yes. I mean, this is, you know, clearly a case where we are tied to each other. The first gigawatt of deployment is super important. We're going to start that, you know, second half of next year and we're going to build on from there. And it really is not just the technology, but, you know, commercial milestones, adoption milestones, and just how we proliferate the capability going forward. But I'm looking forward to building this as fast as possible. You know, we're already working with a number of cloud service providers who are also very active on our technology and I think this is a great catalyst to get the industry to build faster.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
Tied to each other. Such an interesting turn of phrase. And Greg, look, you are seeing more AI users and chip makers and designers becoming more financially tied to each other. Is this going to continue? Is this the step forward for how you see this financing going forward?
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Greg Brockman
Well, I really see the world transitioning to this AI powered economy. And the interesting thing is within OpenAI that we've really seen what it's like when your progress is limited and accelerated as two sides of the coin by computational power, like teams with an open AI that their ability to deliver really is tied to the amount of compute that they get. And I think we're heading to a world where that is how the whole economy will function. And we're starting to see it, right, that people having access to better AI tools, if you're a coder, you're able to do far more if you have access to better, to better AI models. And we're heading to a world where if you can have 10, 10 times as much AI power behind you, you will probably be 10 times more productive. And so I think that we're moving to a world where the whole industry is waking up to the fact that we have just not planned, we have not planned for this moment where this explosion in demand is happening. So it's happening all the way from the power to the silicon. And I think this whole industry has to find a way to actually rise to meet the occasion.
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Bloomberg Tech Host
Lisa, you have given us a look into the future before about how you see the total addressable market, the industry, now that the ink is dry with open air. And Greg, are you rethinking either your bigger picture analysis of the market for AI accelerators and GPUs, or do you see AMD now having an improved position in that market relative, of course, to your friends at Nvidia?
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Lisa Su
Well, again, I think, and I've told you before, I believe that the. This is a huge market. You know, we have size. Just the accelerator TAM being, you know, over $500 billion in TAM over the next few years. I think some might say, you know, maybe I was a little conservative in that TAM analysis. But the way to think about it is there's so much need for compute. I mean, you just heard it from Greg, so, you know, this is a huge pie and you're going to see the need for, you know, more plus players coming into it. And, you know, from my standpoint, this is a big validation of our technology and our capability. You know, as much as we love the work with OpenAI, we're working with a lot of other customers as well. There's a lot of excitement in the industry around my 450, so we're ready for it.
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Bloomberg Tech Co-Host
AMD CEO Lisa Sue, OpenAI President Greg Brockman. It's been a joy having you on the show. Thank you both very much.
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Bloomberg Audio Studios Announcer
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