The leading tech giant Amazon is reportedly in talks to make a massive investment in OpenAI, potentially committing up to $50 billion as part of the AI company’s next funding round.
OpenAI, which is already valued at around $500 billion, is said to be raising as much as $100 billion in fresh capital. If the round materialises as expected, the company’s valuation could climb to roughly $830 billion, placing it among the most valuable private tech firms in the world. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon could account for nearly half of that funding.
Details around the potential deal remain limited, but the report notes that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is personally involved in talks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Both Amazon and OpenAI have declined to comment on the discussions so far.
OpenAI has also been exploring funding from other sources. Reports suggest the company has held conversations with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, while The New York Times has indicated that Nvidia, Microsoft, and SoftBank are also part of broader funding talks. The investment round is expected to close by the end of the first quarter.
An Amazon–OpenAI partnership would be notable given Amazon’s deep and growing relationship with Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s biggest rivals. Amazon has invested at least $8 billion in Anthropic and uses AWS as the startup’s primary cloud and AI training platform. The company recently went a step further by opening an $11 billion data centre campus in Indiana, built specifically to support Anthropic’s AI models.
If the OpenAI deal goes through, it would mark a significant shift in Amazon’s AI strategy—and further underscore how aggressively Big Tech is positioning itself for the next phase of the AI race.
