OpenAI is reportedly seeking to raise $110 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at $840 billion. This significant investment underscores the intense interest and competition surrounding artificial intelligence technologies. OpenAI is best known as the creator of ChatGPT, a conversational AI, and DALL-E, an image generation model. The company aims to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
The funding round includes a reported $30 billion investment from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon. Amazon’s initial investment will be $15 billion, followed by an additional $35 billion as certain conditions are met. These investments come as OpenAI prepares for a potential mega-IPO later in the year. Big Tech firms and investors are eager to establish partnerships with OpenAI, hoping to gain an advantage in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
In addition to the funding, OpenAI and Amazon have reached an agreement for OpenAI to utilise 2 gigawatts of computing capacity powered by Amazon’s Trainium chips. Amazon’s cloud computing platform, AWS, will also serve as the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the company’s enterprise platform designed for building and managing AI agents.
While this new partnership strengthens ties with Amazon, OpenAI’s existing relationship with Microsoft remains unchanged. Microsoft Azure will continue to be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs, and Microsoft retains its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI’s models and products. The status of Nvidia’s previously announced investment commitment of up to $100 billion remains unclear.
