OpenAI and Amazon Discuss Major Investment and Potential Chip Partnership

OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment and an arrangement to use Amazon’s artificial‑intelligence chips, CNBC confirmed on Tuesday. The talks are ongoing and subject to change; a person familiar with the matter told reporters the investment could exceed $10 billion, and the report was first published by The Information.

The negotiations follow OpenAI’s October restructuring and the formalization of its partnership with Microsoft, moves that expanded the company’s capacity to raise capital and to collaborate with a broader set of partners across the AI ecosystem. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI and has supported the company since 2019, but an October statement said it no longer holds a right of first refusal to serve as OpenAI’s compute provider. OpenAI also gained the ability to develop certain products with third parties.

Amazon has previously committed at least $8 billion to Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, and may be seeking to increase its exposure to the generative AI sector. Microsoft recently announced plans to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic, and Nvidia has indicated it will invest up to $10 billion in the startup.

Amazon Web Services has been developing AI processors since roughly 2015, and such hardware is critical for training large models and meeting rising compute demand. AWS introduced its Inferentia chips in 2018 and unveiled the latest generation of Trainium chips earlier this month.

OpenAI has entered into more than $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments in recent months, including agreements with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom. Last month the company signed a contract to purchase $38 billion of capacity from AWS, marking its first agreement with the leading cloud infrastructure provider.

In October, OpenAI completed a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion that allowed current and former employees to sell stock at a valuation of $500 billion.