By Connor Hart
OpenAI and Broadcom collaborated to develop a custom artificial-intelligence chip, marking the next step in the ChatGPT-parent's strategy to build out a full stack behind its models and products.
The chip, called Jalapeño, was built from scratch specifically for large-language model inference, with the goal of improving efficiency and lowering the cost to serve AI systems at scale, the companies said Wednesday.
Early tests show that the chip will deliver performance per watt "substantially better" than current state-of-the-art chips, they added. OpenAI and Broadcom didn't disclose specific performance measures but said a more-detailed technical report will be presented in the coming months.
Jalapeño was built around the memory, networking and compute patterns of large language models, rather than adapted from general-purpose architectures, according to the companies. It also reflects OpenAI's broader effort to reduce reliance on external hardware suppliers and optimize infrastructure for its growing AI services.
"The world is moving to a compute-powered economy," OpenAI President and Co-Founder Greg Brockman said. "By designing more of the stack ourselves, we can serve more intelligence with greater efficiency and keep pushing advanced AI toward broader access."
Broadcom, which is providing silicon implementation and networking technology for the effort, said the project represents the start of a multi-generation collaboration aimed at building large-scale AI infrastructure.
The collaboration comes after OpenAI and Broadcom said last fall they were working together to develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI chips and computing systems over the next four years.
The move places OpenAI among a growing list of technology companies that are designing their own chips to better control the cost and performance of AI workloads.
Write to Connor Hart at connor.hart@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-24-26 1047ET
