Key Points:
- Nvidia will supply one gigawatt of Vera Rubin chips to the startup.
- Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati founded Thinking Machines Lab last year.
- Nvidia made an undisclosed but significant cash investment in the new company.
- Critics worry this creates a loop where Nvidia funds companies to buy its own chips.
Nvidia announced a major partnership on Tuesday with an artificial intelligence startup called Thinking Machines Lab. The tech giant agreed to supply the young company with a massive one gigawatt supply of its upcoming Vera Rubin processors.
Mira Murati started Thinking Machines Lab in 2025. She previously worked as the chief technology officer at OpenAI. She even briefly ran OpenAI when the board temporarily fired Sam Altman in 2023. Murati praised Nvidia in a recent statement, saying the chipmaker built the foundation for the entire artificial intelligence field.
The two companies plan to deploy the new chips early next year. They will also work together to design new training systems for Nvidia hardware. As part of the agreement, Nvidia poured a significant amount of money into the startup to fuel its long-term growth. Neither company revealed the exact dollar amount of this investment.
This financial move highlights a growing trend in the tech world. Critics call it circular investing. They worry that chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD give money to startups just so those startups turn around and buy their processors. Critics say this creates fake demand for the hardware, though Nvidia strongly denies this claim.
Nvidia has aggressively signed deals across the industry over the past month. The company recently agreed to invest thirty billion dollars in OpenAI. It also locked down a multiyear hardware partnership with Meta and signed new agreements with optics companies Coherent and Lumentum.
These massive investments come right after a blockbuster financial quarter. Nvidia recently reported over fifty-seven billion dollars in revenue, easily beating Wall Street predictions. The company expects the cash to keep flowing, guiding for around sixty-five billion dollars in revenue for the fourth quarter.
