OpenAI Closes Record $110B Round
OpenAI has closed a massive $110 billion funding round, the largest ever for a private tech company, at a staggering $730 billion valuation. The round was led by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. The deal also includes a major strategic partnership making Amazon Web Services the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI's most advanced models.
This funding round more than doubles OpenAI's previous record-setting raise. Just last year, the company secured $40 billion in a round led by SoftBank that valued it at $300 billion. The new capital injection catapults OpenAI's post-money valuation to an estimated $840 billion. Amazon's hefty $50 billion investment will be deployed in two stages: an initial $15 billion, with an additional $35 billion to follow once certain conditions are met. This deepens a partnership that now sees Amazon Web Services not just as a cloud provider, but as a collaborator on new enterprise-focused AI environments. The expanded AWS partnership is an eight-year deal that builds upon a previous $38 billion agreement with an additional $100 billion in cloud spending. A key component of this is OpenAI's commitment to use 2 gigawatts of capacity from AWS's custom Trainium AI accelerator chips, signaling a move to leverage Amazon's own silicon for training future models. For SoftBank, this latest $30 billion infusion brings its total investment in OpenAI to $64.6 billion, securing an approximate 13% stake in the AI leader. The Japanese conglomerate has been a major backer, leading a significant funding round for OpenAI in March 2025. Nvidia's $30 billion contribution is part of a broader strategy of investing heavily across the AI ecosystem, from infrastructure to robotics. The chipmaker, whose hardware is essential for training large-scale AI models, has participated in numerous funding rounds for AI startups, solidifying its central role in the industry's growth. The deal also outlines the co-creation of a "Stateful Runtime Environment" on AWS, which will be available through Amazon Bedrock. This environment is designed to allow AI agents to retain context and memory, enabling them to work on more complex, long-term tasks for enterprise customers. OpenAI has stated that its user base has grown to over 900 million weekly active users, with more than 50 million paying consumer subscribers and 9 million business customers. The company noted that January and February of this year were its strongest months ever for new subscriber growth.
