# OpenAI reportedly plans to buy Google’s AI chips, as Google starts selling them to everyone

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/openai-reportedly-plans-to-buy-googles-ai-chips-as-google-starts-selling-them-to-everyone
Published: 2026-10-30
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Industry
Region: North America
Tags: chips

> The Information reports that OpenAI, one of Nvidia’s biggest customers, plans to buy Google’s TPUs. Neither company has confirmed it. The same week, Google said it now sells complete TPU systems for other companies’ data centres, including through Oracle.

![Illustration: a large black square chip outline with a fine grid of grey contacts around its edge, and a single red square die at its centre linked to a smaller chip by a dashed line](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/openai-tpus-1.png)

OpenAI plans to buy Google’s AI chips, The Information reported on 27 October, citing a person familiar with the matter. Neither company has confirmed the report, and no price, number of chips or delivery date has been disclosed.

## Why it matters

Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, are chips designed for the maths that AI models run on. OpenAI began renting them from Google in 2025, saying at the time it was only testing them. Buying them would mean owning the hardware rather than paying by the hour, and it would loosen OpenAI’s dependence on Nvidia, which supplies most of its computing power.

There are signs the report has substance. OpenAI has advertised for an engineer to lead the optimisation of its frontier models on TPUs. Richard Ho, who runs OpenAI’s hardware programme, spent nearly nine years at Google and helped lead its Cloud TPU project. And on 21 October OpenAI’s models became available through Google Cloud. OpenAI is also building its own chip, Jalapeño, with Broadcom, with first deployment planned for the end of 2026.

## Google is now a chip seller

The report landed a day before Alphabet’s quarterly results, which showed how quickly Google is turning TPUs into a product. Google Cloud’s revenue more than doubled, up 103% to $30.7 billion, and the company said sales of TPU systems were a “meaningful contributor”. It began delivering complete TPU systems to customers’ own data centres in the second quarter.

On the earnings call, Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian said nearly 100 customers use TPUs, and that Google has agreed to deliver TPU systems through Oracle and through Crux AI, a venture with Blackstone. Anthropic already has an agreement for several gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity from 2027, and Apple trains its models on TPUs, Kurian said.

Alphabet’s finance chief, Anat Ashkenazi, said she expects TPU system sales to keep growing in the current quarter, “followed by a meaningful revenue ramp in 2027”. Building that business has a cost: Alphabet’s inventory rose to $13.3 billion from $2.4 billion at the end of 2025, largely because of the build-up for TPU system sales.

## Sources

- [Decrypt: OpenAI plans to buy Google’s AI chips as it looks beyond Nvidia, report says](https://decrypt.co/382090/openai-plans-buy-google-ai-chips-looks-beyond-nvidia)
- [The Motley Fool: Alphabet (GOOGL) Q3 2026 earnings call transcript](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/29/alphabet-googl-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/)