OpenAI secures $110 billion in new funding
OpenAI has announced a record-shattering $110 billion funding round, with Amazon and Nvidia as lead backers. The capital infusion cements the company's position at the forefront of the global AI race. The investment is expected to accelerate research, deployment, and commercialization of large-scale generative AI models.
This latest capital injection brings OpenAI's valuation to a staggering $730 billion before the new money, a significant leap from its $500 billion valuation in a secondary share sale in October 2025. The deal marks the largest private financing in history, a record previously set by OpenAI itself with a $40 billion fundraise in March 2025. The funding is broken down into $50 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from Nvidia, and another $30 billion from SoftBank. For Amazon, the investment includes an initial $15 billion, with an additional $35 billion to follow if certain conditions are met, which may be tied to a future IPO or the achievement of artificial general intelligence. This round solidifies a crucial strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will now be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI's enterprise platform, Frontier. As part of the deal, OpenAI and AWS are expanding a previous agreement by an additional $100 billion over eight years. Long-time partner Microsoft, which has invested over $13 billion to date and holds a 27% stake, stated that the new funding and partnerships do not alter their existing agreements. Microsoft retains its exclusive license to OpenAI's intellectual property, and all API calls resulting from third-party collaborations, including with Amazon, will continue to be hosted on Microsoft's Azure. The massive investment is set against a backdrop of explosive growth for the AI company. As of early 2026, ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, over 50 million paying consumer subscribers, and more than 9 million paying business customers. The deal also includes a significant hardware component, with Nvidia providing 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts for training on its Vera Rubin systems. This boost in computing power is aimed at scaling infrastructure to meet the immense global demand for OpenAI's products.
