OpenAI has agreed to pay chip startup Cerebras more than $20 billion over the next three years to use servers powered by the company’s wafer-scale chips, according to The Information, which broke the story on April 16. Reuters confirmed the report. The deal could also give OpenAI an equity stake in Cerebras, making it both the chipmaker’s largest customer and a partial owner.

Deal Structure

The $20 billion commitment doubles OpenAI’s previously reported arrangement with Cerebras. In January, the two companies agreed to a deal valued at more than $10 billion covering up to 750 megawatts of computing capacity over three years, according to CNA.

Under the expanded terms, OpenAI will receive warrants for a minority stake in Cerebras, with its ownership potentially increasing as spending rises, The Information reported. OpenAI has also agreed to provide Cerebras approximately $1 billion to help fund the development of data centers that would run its AI products. Total spending over the next three years could reach $30 billion, which may translate into warrants representing up to a 10% stake in Cerebras, per The Information.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is an early investor in Cerebras, according to Reuters.

The Nvidia Question

The Information described the deal as an effort to “lessen its dependence on Nvidia’s AI chips and potentially lower its computing expenses.” Cerebras makes wafer-scale engine chips that compete with Nvidia GPUs on inference workloads, the process by which AI models generate responses. For agent workloads that require fast, multi-step reasoning, inference speed directly affects how quickly agents can complete tasks.

Cerebras IPO and Valuation

The tie-up with OpenAI is central to Cerebras’ efforts to go public. The AI chipmaker is targeting a listing in the second quarter of 2026 and plans to raise $3 billion in an offering next month at a valuation of about $35 billion, according to The Information. Cerebras was last valued at $23.1 billion. Cerebras could disclose parts of its previously undisclosed arrangement with OpenAI as soon as Friday, the report said.

The Compute Arms Race

The deal is the largest AI chip supply agreement reported to date. For context, OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation in late March. Committing $20 billion or more to a single chip supplier signals that compute procurement is now a strategic priority at the same scale as capital raises. The equity component mirrors the Microsoft-OpenAI relationship structure: OpenAI would be investing in the very infrastructure company it pays to run its workloads, aligning long-term incentives rather than treating chip supply as a commodity purchase.

OpenAI and Cerebras declined to comment, according to Reuters.