OpenAI has announced a new partnership with Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, to design and manufacture components for AI data centers in the United States. The collaboration is part of OpenAI’s significant expansion of its infrastructure footprint.
The companies didn’t share financial details, but OpenAI said it will get early access to test Foxconn’s systems and the option to buy them. The goal, according to both sides, is to accelerate the rollout of new infrastructure while securing long-term production capacity within the U.S.
Under the deal, OpenAI and Foxconn will collaborate on multiple generations of AI servers simultaneously, with Foxconn producing key components—power systems, networking hardware, and cooling solutions—at its American factories. Foxconn currently operates facilities in Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Indiana.
“This partnership is a step toward ensuring the core technologies of the AI era are built here,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, calling AI infrastructure “a generational opportunity to reindustrialise America.”
The agreement adds to a long list of major deals OpenAI has made recently with some of the biggest names in tech. The company has announced around $1.4 trillion in spending commitments, raising questions about whether its future profits can support investments of this scale. Altman recently said OpenAI expects to reach $20 billion in annualised revenue by the end of this year and “hundreds of billions” by 2030.
Among those earlier deals is an unfinalized $100 billion agreement with Nvidia, which would invest in OpenAI in phases as the company expands its infrastructure. OpenAI also maintains cloud partnerships with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and has major compute commitments with Oracle.
The addition of Foxconn gives OpenAI a stronger U.S.-based manufacturing pipeline. Foxconn, best known for being the primary assembler of Apple’s iPhones, has been increasingly moving into AI and automotive hardware. It already manufactures server racks for AI workloads and supplies components to Nvidia, the leading producer of high-end AI chips.
Foxconn chairman Young Liu said the company is “uniquely positioned” to support OpenAI’s goals with reliable and scalable manufacturing.
Still, Foxconn’s U.S. track record is mixed. In 2018, the company began building what was intended to be a large LCD factory in Wisconsin—a project that ultimately fell through. The site is now being repurposed into an AI data center for Microsoft.
