OpenAI is exploring making its own AI chips, has evaluated potential acquisition targets

$Microsoft(MSFT)$ OpenAI is exploring making its own AI chips and has begun evaluating potential acquisition targets, a media report said.

At least since last year, OpenAI has been discussing various options to address the shortage of AI chips, according to the report. OpenAI has made acquiring more AI chips a top priority for the company, discussing options that include researching its own AI chips, working more closely with other chip makers, including$NVIDIA Corp(NVDA)$  , and diversifying its supplier base beyond Nvidia.

OpenAI CEO Altman has previously publicly complained about the shortage of AI chips, a market currently dominated by NVIDIA. Outside analysts believe that OpenAI's own chips are intended to address the GPU shortage while reducing the "dizzying" costs of running the hardware. It is not clear whether OpenAI will continue to promote its own chip program. Industry veterans have said the huge investment could cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

According to Wall Street investment bank Bernstein's analysis, ChatGPT single query costs about 4 cents, if ChatGPT's search volume grows to one-tenth of Google's search volume, it will require about $48.1 billion worth of GPUs and about $16 billion worth of chips per year to keep running.

Given the difficulty of developing its own chips, acquiring a chip company could speed up OpenAI's process of building its own chips. According to media reports, OpenAI has already considered a path of due diligence on potential acquisition targets.

Major U.S. tech giants have been trying to build their own chips for years, with limited success. meta's work on custom chips has been problematic, leading the company to scrap some of its AI chips. openAI's main backer, microsoft, is also working on its own custom AI chip.