OpenAI reportedly plans to buy Google TPU chips alongside Nvidia

OpenAI plans to buy AI chips from Google, according to a report published Tuesday that cites a person familiar with the matter. Financial terms and other details of the planned purchase were not disclosed. The report has not been independently verified. OpenAI declined to comment, and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The chips in question are Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), processors designed specifically for AI workloads. A purchase would mark a shift for OpenAI, which is among the largest buyers of Nvidia's graphics processors.

A new customer for a young business

For Google, OpenAI would be a major customer for hardware it only recently began selling. In April, the company said it would sell TPU hardware directly to a small group of customers, who can run the chips in their own data centres. Demand has grown on the back of deals with customers including Anthropic, and Google has sold so much TPU capacity that its own researchers have had to wait for access.

Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi has said the company expects to book a small share of TPU sales revenue by the end of this year, with most of it arriving in 2027. Alphabet reports quarterly results later today.

Rivals with growing ties

OpenAI and Google compete in AI products and search, yet their business links are deepening. Last week, OpenAI said its frontier models would become available on Google Cloud, following a similar move with Amazon Web Services. The relationship has shifted before: in June 2025, OpenAI was reported to have begun renting Google's chips, but it soon said it had no active plans to use them in its products.

OpenAI is also building its own silicon. In June it unveiled its first custom AI chip, designed with Broadcom, and plans to put it into use by the end of this year.

The report arrives as big tech groups spend heavily on AI computing. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet plan to spend as much as $600bn combined on AI infrastructure this year, according to Reuters.