OpenAI Raises $110 Billion From Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank. OpenAI And AWS Expand Partnership.

Amazon will invest up to $50 billion in ChatGPT creator OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership between the tech giant and AI startup. Amazon (AMZN) stock edged higher in morning trades.

OpenAI announced Friday it has raised $110 billion from investors, which also includes $30 billion from Nvidia (NVDA) and $30 billion from SoftBank, according to a separate blog post from OpenAI. The announcement confirms previous reports that Amazon would be part of a larger investment round for OpenAI.

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Through the strategic partnership, the company’s Amazon Web Services cloud business will be the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, which is focused on developing and deploying AI agents. OpenAI will also consume 2 gigawatts of capacity for Amazon’s custom Trainium AI chips, according to a press release from Amazon.

The deal includes $15 billion in initial investment from Amazon, with $35 billion when “certain conditions are met,” the company said.

OpenAI, meanwhile, will expand a previous multiyear agreement to spend $38 billion on cloud services through AWS by $100 billion over the next eight years.

“We have lots of developers and companies eager to run services powered by OpenAI models on AWS, and our unique collaboration with OpenAI to provide stateful runtime environments will change what’s possible for customers building AI apps and agents,” Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a news release. “We continue to be impressed with what OpenAI is building, and we’re excited not only about their choosing to go big on our custom AI silicon (Trainium), but also our opportunity to invest in the company and partnership over the long-term.”

AI Cloud Partnerships

OpenAI has been partnered with Amazon’s top cloud rival Microsoft (MSFT) since 2019. Amazon countered that relationship by investing $4 billion in Anthropic late in 2023. Anthropic is a rival large language model developer. Amazon invested another $4 billion in Anthropic a year later.

But Friday’s announcement continues a trend of those initial battle lines breaking down. Amazon announced its cloud deal with OpenAI late last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft invested $5 billion in Anthropic in November. Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL) is also invested in Anthropic and has cloud deals with OpenAI.

The AI startups are key partners for each of the so-called Big Three cloud giants. Training AI models requires significant computing power. Amazon, Microsoft and Google also are offering competing tools that allow their other enterprise clients to link their data to top AI models and run applications, a process known as inferencing.

Along with the funding announcement, OpenAI put out a joint press release with Microsoft saying that “nothing about today’s announcements in any way changes the terms of the Microsoft and OpenAI relationship.” Microsoft retains an “exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products,” according to the announcement.

AWS is the largest cloud provider by market share, though Microsoft and Google have been gaining ground. Jassy said earlier this month that Amazon will invest $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, focused on building data centers for it cloud business.

Amazon Stock Slumping In 2026

Amazon’s big AI bet has weighed on shares in recent weeks. Jassy revealed the spending plans during the company’s Q4 earnings report earlier this month. Amazon stock is down 10% year-to-date and has slid 14% in February.

The OpenAI partnership has, so far, received only a small reaction for Amazon stock. Shares are ahead 0.2% at 208.52 in recent trades on the stock market today.

Previous media reports that Amazon was readying an investment in OpenAI could be muting the market reaction. There is also generally more market unease about AI spending.

Meanwhile, Nvidia stock was down 1.8% at 181.48 in recent trades. The chipmaker’s investment comes after previous plans to invest $100 billion in OpenAI stalled.

Analysts with William Blair said in a client note Friday that the partnership could prove to a be “a big deal.” They forecast the spending commitments could drive about $17 billion in annual revenue for AWS. That would represent 11% of AWS’ 2026 consensus revenue estimates.

“For some time, the bear thesis on AWS was that it was being left behind in the AI infrastructure race as OpenAI primarily relied on Microsoft for its compute needs (and Google had Gemini using its own cloud infrastructure),” William Blair analysts Dylan Carden and Arjun Bhatia said. “That bear thesis continues to erode as AWS now has major partnerships with two of the leading AI labs in OpenAI and Anthropic, and both are using AWS custom silicon.”

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