Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank back OpenAI with $110 bln investment

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is raising $110 billion in a blockbuster funding round that would value the company at $840 billion, according to a recent report by Reuters.

The round includes a $50 billion commitment from Amazon, $30 billion from SoftBank and $30 billion from Nvidia. The financing comes ahead of a widely anticipated initial public offering (IPO)  of OpenAI expected later this year.

Amazon will initially invest $15 billion, with a further $35 billion to follow once certain conditions are met. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will use 2 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s in-house Trainium chips. Amazon Web Services (AWS) will become the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the company’s enterprise platform designed for building and managing AI agents, as per the Reuters report.

The partnership does not alter OpenAI’s existing arrangements with Microsoft. Microsoft’s Azure platform will remain the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s application programming interfaces, which give developers access to its models. OpenAI’s own products will continue to be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft retains exclusive licensing rights and access to intellectual property across OpenAI’s models and products, according to the Reuters report.