OpenAI Closes Record $110B Round
OpenAI has completed a historic $110 billion private funding round, pushing its valuation to an estimated $730 billion. The round was backed by tech giants Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. As part of the deal, Amazon Web Services will become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI's advanced "Frontier" models, integrating them into its Bedrock service for enterprise customers.
This latest funding round more than doubles OpenAI's previous record-setting $40 billion raise in April 2025. That round, led by SoftBank, valued the company at $300 billion. The new $110 billion infusion catapults OpenAI's post-money valuation to an estimated $840 billion. Amazon's $50 billion commitment will be paid in two stages: an initial $15 billion, with an additional $35 billion to follow once specific conditions are met. This deal also includes a separate agreement for OpenAI to spend an additional $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next eight years, significantly expanding their existing cloud relationship. Nvidia's $30 billion investment secures a crucial pipeline for its hardware. As part of the deal, OpenAI has committed to using 2 gigawatts of training capacity on Nvidia's upcoming "Vera Rubin" GPU architecture and another 3 gigawatts for inference tasks. This move ensures Nvidia's central role in powering the next generation of AI models. SoftBank's $30 billion investment will be delivered in three installments throughout 2026, in April, July, and October. This follows SoftBank's strategy of making substantial investments in what it considers transformative technology sectors, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. The "Frontier" models are part of an enterprise platform designed for building and managing teams of AI agents. This platform provides shared context, governance, and security for AI agents that can operate across a company's internal systems. Early adopters of the Frontier platform include major companies like HP, Oracle, State Farm, and Uber. Despite the new AWS exclusivity for third-party distribution of Frontier, OpenAI's foundational partnership with Microsoft remains intact. Microsoft Azure continues to be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI's stateless APIs, and Microsoft retains its exclusive license to OpenAI's intellectual property. Both companies issued a joint statement to reaffirm that the terms of their October 2025 agreement are unchanged.
