AI News
OpenAI Plans to Buy Google’s AI Chips, The Information Reports
OpenAI plans to buy AI chips from Google, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The chips are Google’s Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, which compete with Nvidia’s graphics chips. No financial terms and no size for the potential deal were disclosed, and neither company has confirmed the plan: Google did not respond to a Reuters request for comment, and OpenAI declined to comment.
The report still matters, because of who OpenAI is in the chip market. OpenAI is one of the largest buyers of Nvidia’s graphics processing units, the chips it uses to train AI models and run them for users. A purchase from Google would make one of Nvidia’s most important customers into a Google chip customer as well, and it would deepen a commercial relationship between two companies that compete in AI products and search.
Why TPUs, why now
Google’s TPUs have gained ground as an alternative to Nvidia’s market-leading chips, as companies look for cheaper options and for chips suited to running finished models rather than only training them. Google developed the TPU more than ten years ago and has said it is more efficient than Nvidia’s GPUs. Google began selling TPUs directly to some customers this year, and deals with customers including rival Anthropic have fuelled demand. Alphabet, Google’s parent, expects to begin recognising a small percentage of revenue from TPU sales agreements by the end of this year, with the vast majority expected in 2027, its chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi has said.
The ties between OpenAI and Google have already been tightening. Reuters reported in June 2025 that OpenAI had begun renting Google’s AI chips, and last week OpenAI said it would make its frontier AI models available through Google Cloud. The Information also reported that OpenAI is hiring engineers to lead work optimising its cutting-edge models for TPUs, though job postings show that work is still at an early stage.
The Oracle angle
A second announcement the same week shows how far Google’s chip push has come. Google announced on October 27 that Oracle will be the first major cloud company outside Google to offer TPUs to customers, with Oracle buying TPUs directly and deploying them in its own cloud. Which customers use TPUs on Oracle Cloud has not been confirmed, but OpenAI is already a major Oracle cloud customer, so the Oracle route is a second path by which OpenAI could end up running on Google silicon.
OpenAI is not putting all of its eggs in one basket. It is also developing its own chip with Broadcom, with plans reported to deploy it by the end of this year. The broader context is a spending race: Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet plan to spend as much as $600 billion combined this year on AI infrastructure, even as investors increasingly ask when that spending turns into returns. Alphabet reports its quarterly results later on Wednesday, with investors watching for signs that its heavy AI investment keeps driving growth in its cloud business.
What is confirmed and what is not
Keep the status plain. What is confirmed is the reporting itself: The Information reported a plan, citing one person familiar with the matter, and Reuters and Bloomberg later cited the same kind of source. What is not confirmed is the deal: no size, no price, no timetable, and no comment from either company. Until OpenAI or Google says so, this is a reported plan, not a done deal — but it is a plan that fits everything else happening around it: OpenAI renting Google chips, OpenAI models on Google Cloud, Oracle selling TPUs, and a chip market where Nvidia’s customers are actively looking for a second supplier.