OpenAI x Broadcom — The OpenAI Podcast Ep. 8

OpenAI and Broadcom Forge Landmark Partnership to Build the Future of AI Compute

Today, OpenAI announced a groundbreaking, multi-year partnership with semiconductor leader Broadcom to develop a new generation of custom-designed AI hardware. In a special episode of The OpenAI Podcast, leaders from both companies gathered to unveil a collaboration aimed at building the foundational infrastructure for the future of artificial intelligence.

The panel included OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, alongside Broadcom's CEO Hock Tan and President of the Semiconductor Solutions Group, Charlie Kawwas. They outlined a project of unprecedented scale and ambition: to co-design and deploy a complete, vertically integrated system—from the silicon chip to the entire server rack—optimized specifically for OpenAI's demanding AI workloads.

A Partnership of Unprecedented Scale

The collaboration, which has been quietly underway for the past 18 months, is moving from design to deployment. Sam Altman revealed the staggering scope of the initiative: "We will be starting in late next year deploying 10 gigawatts of these racks... which is a gigantic amount of computing infrastructure to serve the needs of the world to use advanced intelligence."

This isn't just about a new chip; it's a holistic approach. "These things have gotten so complex you need the whole thing," Altman explained, referring to the co-design of the chip, the server racks, and the networking that connects them all. The goal is to create a fully optimized ecosystem that can deliver AI capabilities more efficiently and at a lower cost than ever before.

Greg Brockman emphasized that even this massive deployment is just the beginning. "That is a drop in the bucket compared to where we need to go," he said, highlighting the insatiable global demand for AI. Altman wryly added, "That’s a big drop, though."

"In a lot of ways that you would look at the AI infrastructure build-out right now, you would say it's the biggest joint industrial project in human history."
- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

The Vision: Building a Critical Utility for Humanity

The leaders framed this effort not just as a business partnership, but as the creation of a new form of critical infrastructure, akin to the development of railroads or the internet.

"I think this is becoming, over time, a critical utility," said Hock Tan. "It’s a platform that you want to create end-to-end... for 8 billion people globally. It’s like the industrial revolution of a different sort."

Charlie Kawwas echoed this sentiment, stating the profound nature of their work. "We're defining civilization's next-generation operating system," he said. "The beauty of the work we do together is the focus on a certain workload. We started by looking at the AI accelerator... and then we realized very quickly it's not just that XPU, it's the networking that needs to go to scale it up, scale it out, and scale it across."

Full-Stack Optimization: Smarter Design for Smarter AI

A unique aspect of this partnership is the concept of "full vertical integration," where every component of the stack is designed in harmony. This allows for massive efficiency gains that aren't possible when piecing together general-purpose components.

"The most intelligence we can get out of each unit of energy... that will become the gate," Altman explained. By optimizing the entire system from the "melted sand" to the "intelligence at the other end," the partnership aims to dramatically increase the "intelligence per watt."

In a fascinating turn, the very AI this hardware is built to run is also helping to design it. Greg Brockman revealed, "We've been able to apply our own models to designing this chip, which has been really cool. We’ve been able to pull in the schedule, we’ve been able to get massive area reductions... you take components that humans had already optimized, and the model comes out with its own optimizations."

What This Means for the Future

This collaboration represents a fundamental shift in how the infrastructure for AGI will be built. By taking control of their own hardware destiny, OpenAI and Broadcom are accelerating a future of "compute abundance."

"Intelligence is the fundamental driver of economic growth, of increasing the standard of living for everyone," Brockman said. "What we're doing with AI is bringing more intelligence and amplifying the intelligence of everyone."

The ultimate goal is to make advanced AI tools, which are currently compute-scarce, widely and cheaply available. From researchers and developers to artists and everyday users, this influx of optimized compute power will unlock new possibilities, accelerate scientific breakthroughs, and move the world closer to OpenAI's mission of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

As deployment begins next year, the world will be watching closely. This isn't just an upgrade; it's the construction of the very foundation upon which the future of intelligence will be built.