Amazon is in talks to invest at least $10 billion in OpenAI as part of a funding round that would also see the startup use Amazon’s in-house AI chips, according to people familiar with the discussions. The prospective deal would deepen ties between the e-commerce and cloud giant and the leading AI research company, while positioning Amazon’s custom accelerators as a core part of OpenAI’s infrastructure stack.
What Amazon and OpenAI Are Discussing
OpenAI is in active discussions to raise at least $10 billion from Amazon, with the talks centered on a large equity investment that would significantly expand the financial relationship between the two companies. According to a person briefed on the matter, the potential funding is being negotiated as part of a broader commercial arrangement that would align OpenAI’s future computing needs with Amazon’s cloud and semiconductor roadmap, a structure that could give both sides more predictability around cost, capacity, and long-term collaboration.
The same person said the prospective funding would come alongside an agreement for OpenAI to use Amazon’s AI chips as part of its core infrastructure for training and running large language models. Details of the negotiations over the investment and chip usage were first laid out in a report describing how OpenAI is weighing a commitment to Amazon’s in-house accelerators in exchange for fresh capital, a shift that would embed Amazon technology more deeply into the systems that power ChatGPT and other OpenAI services. For OpenAI, the talks highlight the pressure to secure reliable, large-scale compute at a time when demand for generative AI continues to surge among enterprise and consumer customers.
Strategic Role of Amazon’s AI Chips
OpenAI’s planned use of Amazon’s AI chips is a central part of the talks, with the investment reportedly conditioned on OpenAI adopting those processors for a substantial share of its workloads. As described in coverage of the negotiations, the deal would see OpenAI adopt Amazon’s in-house AI accelerators as part of its computing infrastructure, integrating them into the clusters that train and serve its most advanced models. That structure would give Amazon a marquee customer for its custom silicon and provide OpenAI with an additional source of high-performance hardware at a moment when access to accelerators is one of the most important constraints on AI development.
Reporting on the discussions notes that the funding talks are explicitly tied to OpenAI’s commitment to use Amazon’s AI chips, underscoring how closely Amazon is linking capital deployment to adoption of its hardware. For Amazon, tying a multibillion-dollar investment to chip usage is a way to accelerate the maturity and scale of its AI silicon business, while for OpenAI it represents a trade-off between diversifying its compute suppliers and the operational complexity of running on multiple hardware platforms. The outcome will shape not only the economics of OpenAI’s infrastructure but also the competitive dynamics among chipmakers and cloud providers vying to become the default platform for generative AI.
Financial Scale and Market Implications
The Information reports that OpenAI is looking to raise at least $10 billion from Amazon in this round, a figure that would rank among the largest single corporate investments in an AI startup. Separate coverage from Reuters on talks to raise at least $10 billion from Amazon underscores that the discussions are focused on a substantial capital infusion that could materially extend OpenAI’s runway for training larger models and scaling its products. At that scale, Amazon would become one of OpenAI’s most important financial backers, with a stake that could give it meaningful influence over future technical and commercial priorities.
Investing.com has highlighted that the same at least $10 billion figure would make Amazon a major financial backer of OpenAI, placing it alongside or ahead of other large corporate investors in the company. A report from Investing.com on OpenAI’s talks to raise at least $10 billion and use Amazon’s AI chips notes that such a commitment would signal Amazon’s intent to compete aggressively for the most demanding AI workloads. For the broader market, a deal of this size would reinforce the trend of hyperscale cloud providers using large strategic investments to secure anchor AI tenants, a pattern that could make it harder for smaller infrastructure players to win comparable deals.
How This Changes the Competitive AI Landscape
Coverage relayed by Yahoo Finance describes how Amazon’s potential investment and chip deal with OpenAI would deepen competition in the AI infrastructure market, as OpenAI begins to use Amazon’s AI chips for key parts of its stack. In that account, the combination of capital and hardware commitments is framed as a way for Amazon to pull more of OpenAI’s workloads onto its cloud, challenging the dominance of rival providers that currently host a significant share of OpenAI traffic. A report from Yahoo Finance on OpenAI’s talks to raise at least $10 billion and adopt Amazon’s AI chips points out that the move would signal to other AI startups that Amazon is willing to pair infrastructure deals with sizable financial backing.
Reuters has framed the talks as a move that could strengthen Amazon’s position against other cloud providers by tying OpenAI’s workloads to Amazon’s AI hardware, a shift that would give Amazon a flagship AI tenant to showcase the performance of its chips. At the same time, The Information has positioned the potential partnership as a significant change in OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy, centered on its agreement to use Amazon’s AI chips as part of its long-term roadmap. For customers and developers, a deeper alignment between OpenAI and Amazon could translate into tighter integration between OpenAI models and Amazon Web Services tools, while also intensifying the race among cloud platforms to secure exclusive or preferential access to leading AI systems.
What’s New and What Happens Next
The latest reporting from The Information introduces Amazon as a prospective new investor in OpenAI tied to a chip-usage deal, adding a fresh dimension to OpenAI’s funding strategy. In that account, Amazon is not only considering a large equity stake but is also negotiating a role for its in-house accelerators in OpenAI’s future infrastructure, a combination that would align financial incentives with technical adoption. The report on how OpenAI is in talks to raise at least $10 billion from Amazon and use its AI chips makes clear that the structure of the deal is still being refined, including how quickly and extensively OpenAI would shift workloads onto Amazon hardware.
Reuters emphasizes that these are ongoing talks for OpenAI to raise at least $10 billion from Amazon, indicating the terms are not yet finalized and could change as negotiations continue. Investing.com similarly reports that OpenAI’s discussions to raise at least $10 billion and adopt Amazon’s AI chips are still at the negotiation stage, signaling that further details could shift as both sides weigh technical, financial, and regulatory considerations. For investors, customers, and competitors, the next phase will involve watching whether the parties reach a binding agreement, how any deal is structured across equity and commercial commitments, and what it reveals about the evolving balance of power between AI model developers and the cloud platforms that supply their compute.
