OpenAI, one of the world's biggest customers of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips, recently began renting Google's AI chips to power ChatGPT and other products, the first time it has used non-Nvidia chips in a meaningful way, according to a person who is involved in the arrangement.

The move reflects OpenAI's broader shift away from relying on Microsoft data centers and could boost Google's tensor processing units as a cheaper alternative to Nvidia's graphics processing units, which dominate the AI chip market.