OpenAI Closes Record $110B Funding Round
OpenAI has closed a historic $110B private funding round, with Amazon and Nvidia as anchor investors. The massive raise, the largest in AI startup history, is framed as part of a "capital arms race" to scale AI for everyone and deepen its integration into daily information routines. The capital is expected to fuel an acceleration of product launches and partnerships.
This record-breaking funding round places OpenAI's post-money valuation at approximately $840 billion, more than double the market capitalizations of established tech giants like Oracle and Netflix. The investment is structured in phases, with Amazon's $50 billion contribution starting with an initial $15 billion, followed by an additional $35 billion pending certain conditions. SoftBank's $30 billion investment will also be delivered in three tranches throughout the year. This capital injection is earmarked to address the soaring costs of computing power required for training and running advanced AI models. OpenAI is targeting a total compute spend of roughly $600 billion through 2030. The deal with Amazon includes an expansion of their existing cloud agreement by an additional $100 billion over eight years and a commitment for OpenAI to use 2 gigawatts of power from Amazon's custom Trainium AI chips. The user base for OpenAI's products has seen significant growth, with ChatGPT now attracting over 900 million weekly active users. The company also supports more than 50 million paying consumer subscribers and 9 million paying business users. This user growth has translated into a substantial increase in revenue, which surpassed $20 billion in 2025, a 233% rise from the $6 billion generated in 2024. As part of the deal, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, an enterprise platform for building and managing AI agents. The two companies will also collaborate on creating a "Stateful Runtime Environment" available on Amazon Bedrock, designed to allow AI models to retain context and manage complex, ongoing workflows. This move positions OpenAI to compete more directly with enterprise software providers like Salesforce and Workday. This funding round dwarfs previous investments in the AI space, including OpenAI's own $40 billion round in 2025 and rival Anthropic's $30 billion raise announced in February 2026. The massive influx of capital highlights the intense competition and escalating costs in the race to develop and control foundational AI technologies. While the deal strengthens OpenAI's partnerships with Amazon and Nvidia, the company reaffirmed that its long-standing relationship with Microsoft, its largest single shareholder, remains unchanged.
