OpenAI and Broadcom unveil their own AI chip design

In October, artificial intelligence startup OpenAI said it would work with chip maker Broadcom to build its own computer chips suitable for running AI technologies like its ChatGPT chatbot.

On Wednesday, the two companies unveiled a design for their first chip, called Jalapeño, marking a milestone in OpenAI’s effort to install the technology in data centers to power AI around the world.

OpenAI said it plans to eventually use enough of these custom chips to consume 10 gigawatts of electricity, an amount that could power millions of homes.

In addition to the company’s collaboration with Broadcom, OpenAI has signed deals with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD and startup Cerebras.

OpenAI is among the many tech companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have said they plan to spend roughly $700 billion on data centers this year alone.

OpenAI is already building its first facility in Abilene, Texas. It plans to build additional data centers in other parts of the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, dominates the market for chips used to power AI technologies like ChatGPT. But many companies are now designing chips that want to challenge its dominance, including tech giants like Google and Amazon, venerable chipmakers like AMD, and startups like Cerebras.

By designing its own chips, OpenAI can reduce its reliance on Nvidia and AMD and gain more leverage in negotiating deals with those companies. Google also works with Broadcom to design its AI chips.

The Jalapeño chip is designed to run AI technologies and deliver them to businesses and consumers. OpenAI uses additional chips that are able to analyze huge amounts of data to create its AI technologies.

“Based on early testing, Jalapeño will efficiently run our most critical workloads close to the theoretical limits of the hardware,” Richard Ho, who leads OpenAI’s hardware efforts, said in a statement.

OpenAI and Broadcom said they completed the chip design in just nine months, an unusually short time for a new chip. But because the design of a chip is so complicated, even experienced chipmakers often build several versions of a chip before they can use it more widely.

The company did not provide more information about when the chips might be released.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging copyright infringement on news content related to AI systems. Both companies denied the claims.)