Amazon Plans a $10b+ Investment in OpenAI

The startup behind ChatGPT is negotiating a financial deal more like an investment with Amazon to spend over $10 billion (£7.5 billion) in OpenAI.

The talks between the two are still “very fluid,” according to The Information, which cited a source familiar with the situation in which OpenAI’s market capitalisation may surpass $500 billion if it proceeds. However, in addition to Amazon’s investment, OpenAI may make use of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) proprietary Trainium AI chips.

The largest datacentre provider in the world, Amazon is best known for being an online store. With its funding, OpenAI would be able to fulfil its obligations to rent capacity from cloud computing businesses, including Amazon on the condition that the deal goes through successfully. OpenAI would alsonbecome one of Anthropic’s leading AI companies utilising the Trainium chips. AWS created Project Rainier for Anthropic, a collection of hundreds of thousands of Trainium2 chips spread across several US campuses, as announced in late 2024. One of Anthropic’s biggest investors is Amazon.

A computing agreement has already been established between OpenAI and AWS. OpenAI and AWS inked a $38 billion multi-year deal earlier this year for access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GB200s and GB300s. According to The Information, Amazon’s Trainium chips, which rival those made by Nvidia and Google, will be used by OpenAI. 

Apart from Nvidia GPUs, OpenAI is also reported to use Google’s TPUs (tensor processing units), AMD’s GPUs, and Broadcom’s proprietary processors.

According to the article, which further describes the larger fundraising round with additional investors may result from Amazon’s financing.

Over the next eight years, OpenAI plans to spend $1.4 trillion on compute for the chips and servers that operate its chatbot and a sum that is significantly more than its stated $13 billion in yearly income.

Consequently, the losing company has been looking for further finance and has changed its primary business to a for-profit company. In a deal that valued OpenAI at $500 billion, Microsoft, the company’s primary long-time supporter, acquired an approximately 27% interest.

The Information further claims that the investment could increase OpenAI’s valuation to over $500 billion and pave the way for a larger fundraising round with additional investors. HSBC analysts projected in November 2025 that OpenAI will require approximately $207 billion to fulfil its development goals for AI data centres.

The business was considering of selling its shares to the general public in an IPO, which could put the company’s valuation as much as $1 trillion valuation, according to earlier reports from Reuters.

The announcement strengthens OpenAI’s decision to use a variety of cloud service providers. Prior to the Stargate announcement in January 2025, Microsoft was OpenAI’s sole cloud partner. However, the two companies later acknowledged that their cooperation was no longer exclusive, with OpenAI now collaborating with Google and Oracle.

Oracle is also considering spending $300 billion to construct data centres in Texas, New Mexico, Michigan, and Wisconsin, according to other agreements made by OpenAI this year. To use the sites, OpenAI is planned to reimburse about the same amount.

In a different deal, Nvidia will invest non-controlling shares in OpenAI and OpenAI will pay cash for chips.

George Osborne, a former chancellor of the United Kingdom, was hired by OpenAI on Tuesday to establish connections with governments worldwide and facilitate national-level AI initiatives.

He will be in charge of the organization’s “OpenAI for Countries” initiative, which aims to assist governments in developing their AI capabilities.

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has issued a “code red” staff alert to spearhead a counteroffensive against rivals headed by Google, whose Gemini AI tool update provided it an advantage over rivals like ChatGPT. 

According to reports, discussions about business prospects and offering the online retailer a corporate version of ChatGPT are part of the discussions with Amazon.

The strategic move and talks come after Microsoft’s right of first refusal as OpenAI’s exclusive compute supplier was eliminated, giving OpenAI greater flexibility to collaborate with alternative cloud providers like Amazon.

OpenAI declined to comment. A request for comment has been made to Amazon.