The purchase comes after acquisition negotiations collapsed, leaving the Altman-backed AI chip startup close to shutting down as competition for computing infrastructure intensifies.
OpenAI has acquired some patent assets from Rain AI after earlier talks to buy the AI chip startup failed. Rain AI, founded about eight years ago and backed by investors including Sam Altman, has nearly ceased operations and most of its employees have left, the report said. The deal points to OpenAI's interest in absorbing chip-related intellectual property as AI companies push deeper into hardware, data centers and energy to secure the computing capacity needed to run advanced models. Rain AI had been developing energy-efficient chips for AI workloads, including what it called neuromorphic processing units, or NPUs, aimed at reducing the cost of training and inference. In 2019, OpenAI signed a nonbinding letter of intent to buy $51 million of Rain AI chips once available, but no purchase was completed. The episode also underscores how intense competition and heavy capital demands are pressuring startups in the AI chip sector, even as larger players expand across the broader AI infrastructure stack.