OpenAI Closes Record $110B Funding Round
OpenAI has closed the largest funding round in tech history, raising $110 billion from investors including Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. As part of the deal, Amazon is committing up to $50 billion to make AWS a primary cloud provider for OpenAI. The company also confirmed it is giving the Pentagon privileged access to its most advanced AI models.
This latest funding round catapults OpenAI's valuation to a staggering $840 billion post-money. The new valuation is a significant leap from its $500 billion valuation in a secondary share sale in October 2025. This financing eclipses all previous private tech funding rounds, including OpenAI's own prior record-setting raise. Amazon's $50 billion commitment will be staggered, with an initial investment of $15 billion, followed by an additional $35 billion contingent on certain conditions. As part of the expanded partnership, OpenAI will spend an additional $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next eight years, and AWS will be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI's enterprise platform, Frontier. The deal with the Pentagon will see OpenAI's models deployed within the Defense Department's classified networks. This agreement was reached after OpenAI established "red lines" prohibiting the use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance and to direct autonomous weapons systems, a point of contention that led to the collapse of a similar deal with AI rival Anthropic. Long-time backer Microsoft did not participate in this financing round. However, the two companies issued a joint statement reaffirming that their existing partnership remains unchanged, with Microsoft retaining its exclusive license to OpenAI's intellectual property and Azure continuing as the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI APIs. Nvidia's $30 billion investment secures significant computing power for OpenAI, including dedicated access to its next-generation "Vera Rubin" GPU architecture. This is in line with Nvidia's broader strategy of investing heavily in the AI ecosystem to bolster its position as a key hardware provider for artificial intelligence development. SoftBank's $30 billion contribution continues its significant investment in the AI sector through its Vision Fund. The Japanese conglomerate has been a major financial backer of OpenAI, having previously led a $40 billion funding round, and its continued investment underscores its strategy of taking substantial stakes in what it considers to be transformative technology companies.
