OpenAI in talks to raise at least $100 billion from Amazon and use its custom AI chips

OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon about a sweeping new relationship that could reshape how the company funds and runs its AI infrastructure. The talks center on a potential investment that could reach at least $100 billion and an agreement for OpenAI to use Amazon’s custom AI chips, CNBC confirmed Tuesday night, citing a person familiar with the matter. The terms remain fluid, and the final structure could shift as negotiations continue. The Information first reported the discussions.

The timing matters. OpenAI finalized a major corporate restructuring in October that loosened long-standing constraints tied to its relationship with Microsoft. That shift gave OpenAI more freedom to raise capital and work with multiple partners across the AI ecosystem. For years, Microsoft stood as OpenAI’s primary backer and compute provider, investing more than $13 billion since 2019. Under the revised structure, Microsoft no longer has a right of first refusal for OpenAI’s compute needs, creating opportunities for new alliances.

Amazon enters the cloud infrastructure market, and chips become strategic choke points for AI development. Through AWS, Amazon has spent nearly a decade building its own silicon stack, starting internal chip design around 2015. The company introduced Inferentia chips in 2018 and rolled out the latest version of its Trainium chips earlier this month. These processors target the same bottleneck OpenAI faces today: the soaring cost and limited supply of advanced compute required to train and run large models.

The talks with Amazon come as OpenAI secures unprecedented infrastructure commitments. In recent months, the company has disclosed more than $1.4 trillion in long-term commitments for compute capacity, including agreements with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom. Last month, OpenAI signed a $38 billion agreement to purchase capacity from AWS, marking its first major contract with the world’s largest cloud provider. A deeper partnership would signal a broader shift from a single-cloud strategy toward a diversified compute base, CNBC reported.

Amazon’s interest reflects a wider scramble among Big Tech to secure influence in generative AI. The company has already invested at least $8 billion in Anthropic, an OpenAI rival. Microsoft joined that race last month, committing up to $5 billion to Anthropic, alongside Nvidia’s commitment of up to $10 billion. These overlapping bets show how infrastructure, capital, and model development are converging into a tightly contested field.

OpenAI’s scale adds urgency to the negotiations. In October, the company completed a $6.6 billion secondary share sale that let current and former employees sell stock at a $500 billion valuation. That price tag underscores the stakes for any new investor and explains why discussions with Amazon focus on more than cash alone. Access to custom chips and long-term compute supply could prove just as valuable as capital in the next phase of AI competition.

For OpenAI, a deal with Amazon would mark another step toward independence after years of deep alignment with Microsoft. For Amazon, this could place AWS hardware at the center of one of the world’s most influential AI platforms. The outcome may set a precedent for how frontier AI labs balance power among cloud giants as the cost of intelligence continues to rise.