Nvidia is to discard its earlier planned $100 billion (£74bn) investment in OpenAI in favour of a $30bn contribution to the start-up’s current funding round, the Financial Times reported.

The dominant producer of AI accelerator chips is in the final stages of negotiations for the investment with OpenAI, with a deal expected to be reached as soon as this weekend, the paper said, citing unnamed people.

The investment is part of a broader funding round that is set to raise more than $100bn for OpenAI, valuing it at $730bn before the new money.

Much of the investment is expected to be re-invested in Nvidia hardware, but the companies will not proceed with the deal announced with great fanfare in September, the report said.

The current investment is likely to be followed by further equity deals, the FT report said.

That multi-year deal was greeted with scepticism by many analysts for its circular structure and vague terms, but investors were more enthusiastic, and it helped drive Nvidia’s shares above $5tn a few weeks later.

The deal was later reported not to have progressed beyond the stage of a memorandum of understanding, and the Wall Street Journal reported in January that it was “on ice” amid increasing investor caution in the AI space.

OpenAI’s annualised revenue run rate exceeded $20bn earlier this year, but its revenues are dwarfed by the $1.5tn in commitments it has made to pay for AI infrastructure and chips with providers including AMD, Broadcom and Oracle.

The start-up is expected to hold a public offering sometime this year.

SoftBank is expected to invest $30bn in the start-up’s current funding round, while Amazon could invest up to $50bn as part of a broader deal that could include the use of OpenAI models, reports have said.

MGX, Microsoft, and venture capital firms are said to be also lining up investments.