OpenAI is in talks with Amazon about a potential investment and an agreement to use its artificial intelligence chips, according to a CNBC report. The details are subject to change but the investment could exceed $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Amazon has been trying to diversify its investments in the AI race, after partnering with and investing in OpenAI rival Anthropic. Earlier this month, Amazon unveiled the latest iteration in its Trainium series of chips, and outlined the development of the next installment of those chips, complementing its cloud computing offerings via Amazon Web Services (AWS).
News about the deal came a couple of months after OpenAI completed its transition to a for-profit model, which gives it more freedom to strike deals with investors other than Microsoft, one of the company’s earliest backers with a stake of 27%.
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While Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and backed the company since 2019, it no longer has a right of refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider, according to a release. OpenAI can now also develop some products with third parties.
Amazon’s investment in OpenAI is the latest in a series of “circular deals” in the AI space. These deals involve major hardware manufacturers and cloud providers striking deals with new AI companies to use their products. The companies, in turn, commit to using their data centers and chips for training their AI models.
Back in March, OpenAI invested $350 million of equity into CoreWeave, which used the funds to buy chips from its backer Nvidia. Those same chips provide compute to OpenAI, which increases CoreWeave’s revenue and in the end makes OpenAI’s stake more valuable.
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In October, OpenAI signed a deal to pick up a 10% stake in AMD and committed to using the chipmaker’s AI GPUs, and also signed a chip usage agreement with Broadcom that month. And in November, the ChatGPT maker signed a $38 billion cloud computing deal with Amazon.
In October, OpenAI finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
OpenAI has also been laying the groundwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of up to $1 trillion. The company is reportedly considering filing with securities regulators as soon as the second half of 2026. OpenAI has looked at raising $60 billion at the low end and likely more, during preliminary discussions.