OpenAI reportedly plans to buy Google AI chips

Felix Laurent 28 Oct 2026 3 min read

big tech

Bloomberg reported on Oct 28, citing a person familiar with the matter, that OpenAI intends to buy AI computing chips from Alphabet's Google. The purchase is part of broader efforts by the ChatGPT maker to build out its AI infrastructure.

The Information broke the story a day earlier, also citing one person. Both reports rest on anonymous sources. We read the coverage and checked what it adds about OpenAI, Google and Nvidia.

What the reports say

Bloomberg says OpenAI plans to buy AI chips from Google. The person asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Final terms of any deal are not yet known, according to that person. OpenAI and Google declined to comment.

The Information, as relayed by Reuters and The Next Web, says the chips are Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs. These are processors Google designs specifically for AI work. Financial terms, volumes and timing were not disclosed. The key word in both reports is "buy," and that marks a change from how OpenAI has used Google's chips so far.

From renting to buying

OpenAI already knows the hardware. Reuters reported in June 2025 that OpenAI had started renting TPUs through Google Cloud to cut the cost of running ChatGPT. Soon after, OpenAI said it had no active plans to use them in its products.

A purchase would go further than renting capacity. AI Weekly points to an OpenAI job listing for a TPU compiler engineer who would lead the optimization of its frontier models on TPUs. The Next Web adds that OpenAI's models will also become available on Google Cloud. That raises the question of why Google is willing to sell its chips at all.

Why Google is selling TPUs

For years, TPUs were mostly reachable only inside Google Cloud. In April, Google said it would sell TPU hardware directly to a small group of customers to run in their own data centers. Demand has been high enough that Google's own researchers have had to wait for access, The Next Web reports.

Anthropic is the largest known customer. In October 2025, it secured access to up to one million TPUs, with over a gigawatt coming online in 2026. In February 2026, The Information reported that Meta agreed to rent TPUs through Google Cloud. Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi has said most TPU sales revenue will arrive in 2027. OpenAI would be the biggest name yet, and that puts the spotlight on Nvidia.

Where Nvidia fits

OpenAI is among the largest buyers of Nvidia's graphics processors. In September 2025, Nvidia signed a letter of intent to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply at least 10 gigawatts of systems. OpenAI has since spread its bets. AMD agreed to supply 6 gigawatts, Broadcom is co-developing 10 gigawatts of custom chips, and Cerebras signed a deal worth over $10 billion.

One report says the TPUs would come in addition to Nvidia GPUs, not instead of them. 24/7 Wall St. framed the story as a hit to Nvidia's tie with its biggest customer. Jensen Huang has said he is "very confident" OpenAI will stay a customer and partner. With so much at stake, it matters how little of the story is confirmed.

What is not confirmed

Neither company has confirmed the plan. No deal size, price or delivery schedule has been disclosed. Every outlet traces the story to the same two anonymous sources, at Bloomberg and The Information.

The TPU detail comes from The Information, not from Bloomberg's text. That explains why some retellings date the news to Oct 27 and others to Oct 28. Alphabet reports quarterly results after the close on Oct 28, which may bring the first on-record comment.

What it would mean

So is OpenAI moving away from Nvidia? Not on this evidence. If the reports are right, OpenAI would buy compute from a direct AI rival and add a fifth chip supplier to a list Nvidia still leads. A retelling of The Information's report calls it the first time OpenAI would hand critical computing needs to a supplier other than Nvidia. But the deal has no disclosed size, and it sits beside commitments measured in tens of gigawatts. For Google, it would confirm that TPUs now compete for outside buyers. For now, this is a reported intention, not an agreement.