OpenNvidia may be the AI generation's WinTel

Opinion The OpenAI and Nvidia $100 billion partnership sure sounds impressive. $100 billion isn't chicken feed, even as more and more tech companies cross the trillion-dollar mark. But what does it really mean?

As two of my Register colleagues noted, "The announcement has enough wiggle room to drive an AI-powered self-driving semi through." True, but it may be the start of something huge that will define the AI movement for the foreseeable future.

Let's step into the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman to the early 1980s, when PCs from companies most of you have never heard of, such as Osborne, Kaypro, and Sinclair Research, landed on desktops.

IBM decided to get into the personal computer business, and the company needed chips. So Big Blue teamed with a relatively obscure CPU company called Intel.

That took care of the hardware, but IBM needed an operating system urgently. Initially, like everyone else, except for those guys named Steve with some company called Apple, IBM wanted to use CP/M from Digital Research. That didn't work out. So, IBM called Microsoft, and Bill Gates and crew acquired Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS ) from Seattle Computer Products, and slapped the names MS-DOS and IBM PC-DOS on it. Microsoft also, and this is the critical bit, kept the right to sell MS-DOS to other companies.

Intel, of course, had always retained the right to sell its chips to anyone. It quickly became clear that IBM was onto something. So other new companies, Compaq specifically, sprang up to develop their own PC clones, starting with the Compaq Portable in 1983. It, and all the many other clones from companies like Dell, HP, and Packard Bell, were, of course, powered by Intel chips and ran Microsoft operating systems.

The two companies started working hand-in-glove with each other. By the late '80s, their pairing, WinTel, would rule the PC world. Decades later, while not nearly as dominant as they once were, chances are the computer in front of you is WinTel.

What does that have to do with OpenNvidia? Everything. This deal promises to create the world's largest AI infrastructure project to date. It gives OpenAI access to millions of Nvidia GPUs and the capital needed for a massive wave of next-generation data centers.

But what else are they going to say? Sucks to be you, Anthropic? Bite me, Oracle?

I mean, seriously, where exactly will all the other AI software companies get the Nvidia GPUs they so desperately need when Nvidia has promised so many of its newest Vera Rubin processors to OpenAI? If the deal comes to completion, that 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems that OpenAI gets is roughly equal to four to five million GPUs. According to analysts, Nvidia's total AI GPU run will amount to only 6.5 to 7 million chips in 2025. That doesn't leave many chips over for everyone else, does it?

An Nvidia spokesman told Reuters, "Our investments will not change our focus or impact supply to our other customers - we will continue to make every customer a top priority, with or without any equity stake." But what else are they going to say? Sucks to be you, Anthropic? Bite me, Oracle?

Now, where have I seen this combination of chips and software before? Oh, right. WinTel. It worked pretty well for them, didn't it? As for their rivals back in the early days, I recall them because I was already in the tech industry then. If you're under 40, have you even heard of North Star Computers, Cromemco, or Vector Graphics? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Of course, it's possible that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) might have something to say about this de facto move to a monopoly. After all, today, NVIDIA has about 92 percent of the data center AI chip market. As for OpenAI, it's been growing faster than essentially all other AI companies, whether you measure it in user adoption or financial scale. By mid-2025, OpenAI's annualized revenue had soared to $10–$13 billion - up from $3.7 billion in 2024 - and its projected 2025 revenue was $12.7 billion. Simultaneously, TechGaged and StatCounter both report OpenAI ChatGPT’s AI chatbot market share ranges from 80.9 percent to 82.7 percent in recent months.

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Oh wait. I forgot. The US is governed by Donald "Anarchy in AI" Trump. The FTC won't be stopping this deal. It's possible the UK's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the EU's European Commission may have something to say. Whether NVIDIA and OpenAI will pay either any attention is another matter.

True, the deal's details are still messy. As Scott Raynovich, Founder and Chief Technology Analyst of the technology analysis firm Futuriom, noted in a LinkedIn comment, "All of these deals are the same... to me they read like... 'I promise to spend a bunch of money with you if you kick a bunch back to me... but there is no guarantee... and it's all contingent on things going exactly as they are going right now, but we could always bail.'"

Far be it from me to disagree. This deal could go sideways. After all, I'm one of those who won't be surprised if AI goes bust. But, if it doesn't, Nvidia is the one AI company I see surviving. Any business that's aligned closely with Nvidia may do quite well. After all, just like with the dot-com crash, after all the crying, the internet grew and grew. I expect the same will happen with AI, no matter what happens to it in the short term. So, yes, in the long run, I can see OpenNvidia dominating AI in the 2040s the way Wintel did in the 2000s. ®