Amazon Pledges Up to $50B to OpenAI
Amazon is committing up to $50 billion as part of OpenAI's historic $110 billion funding round, which now values the AI firm at $840 billion. The deal cements AWS as the cloud backbone for OpenAI's enterprise offerings, aiming to scale its AI models for businesses globally.
Amazon's investment is structured in phases, with an initial commitment of $15 billion, to be followed by an additional $35 billion pending the fulfillment of certain conditions. This deal is part of a colossal $110 billion funding round, with Nvidia and SoftBank each contributing $30 billion. The investment is deeply intertwined with a cloud computing agreement. OpenAI is expanding its existing multi-year deal with AWS by an additional $100 billion over eight years. This makes AWS the exclusive third-party cloud provider for some of OpenAI's enterprise products, a significant move given OpenAI's long-standing relationship with Microsoft Azure. As part of the deal, OpenAI has committed to using Amazon's custom-designed Trainium AI chips, providing a major endorsement for Amazon's in-house silicon efforts against competitors like Nvidia. The agreement specifies that OpenAI will consume approximately 2 gigawatts of Trainium capacity. This funding round has seen OpenAI's valuation soar dramatically. The company was valued at $300 billion in April 2025 and reached $500 billion in a share sale in October 2025. The new $840 billion valuation places it among the most valuable privately held companies in the world. Despite this new partnership, both OpenAI and Microsoft have stated that their existing relationship remains strong. Microsoft, which has invested over $13 billion in the AI firm, will continue to have its Azure platform host many of OpenAI's core services.
