OpenAI announced a new partnership with Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) to co-design and prepare U.S. manufacturing for next-generation AI infrastructure hardware, marking one of the company’s most significant moves yet to expand domestic compute capacity.
Under the collaboration, OpenAI will share insights into emerging hardware requirements for future AI systems, helping guide Foxconn’s design and development process. While the agreement includes no purchase commitments, OpenAI will gain early access to evaluate new systems with the option to buy them once production begins.
The partnership centers on three major initiatives. First, OpenAI and Foxconn will co-engineer multiple generations of AI data center racks simultaneously, aiming to keep pace with rapidly advancing model demands. Second, the companies plan to simplify and strengthen the U.S. AI supply chain by redesigning rack architecture for domestic manufacturing and expanding sourcing to more U.S.-based suppliers. Third, Foxconn will manufacture key components—including cabling, networking hardware, cooling systems, and power infrastructure—at its U.S. facilities.
Foxconn Chairman Young Liu praised the partnership, calling the company “uniquely positioned” to support OpenAI’s growing infrastructure needs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the effort as part of a “generational opportunity to reindustrialize America” through AI-driven manufacturing.
The agreement comes as the race to build massive, high-efficiency AI compute accelerates across the industry, with companies pursuing new U.S. manufacturing capacity to support increasingly large-scale models.
The push aligns with broader U.S. industrial policy trends and echoes similar initiatives across the sector, including recent joint ventures that aim to expand advanced AI infrastructure—efforts explored in greater depth in Aistify’s analysis of SoftBank and OpenAI’s expanding partnership in Japan.
