OpenAI said Friday it has received $110 billion in funding from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, with Amazon leading the commitments as OpenAI’s leadership described the move as a transition toward scaling frontier artificial intelligence into everyday products. OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman said Amazon would initially invest $15 billion and add another $35 billion in the coming months under preset conditions, with additional investors expected to join as the funding round progresses.
Altman said the funding round sets OpenAI’s pre-money valuation at $730 billion. “These partnerships expand our global reach, deepen our infrastructure, and strengthen our balance sheet so we can bring frontier AI to more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide,” Altman wrote in a message accompanying the announcement.
Altman also said the ChatGPT service has reached more than 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million consumer subscribers. He said OpenAI is entering “a new phase where frontier AI moves from research into daily use at global scale,” adding that leadership will depend on who can scale infrastructure fast enough to meet demand and turn that capacity into products people rely on.
OpenAI and Amazon’s multiyear partnership will include bringing new advanced AI capabilities to enterprises and using Amazon Web Services as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, Altman said. He added that OpenAI and AWS plan to expand their current $38 billion multiyear deal by $100 billion over eight years, and partner on developing customized models available to Amazon developers for use in Amazon’s customer-facing applications.
Altman said OpenAI is also expanding its partnership with Nvidia, reflecting how chipmakers are increasingly tied to the compute-intensive needs of cutting-edge AI systems. OpenAI did not describe additional terms in the announcement beyond the funding amounts and the relationship with AWS, but it positioned the deal as both an infrastructure build-out and a balance-sheet strengthening effort.
OpenAI also addressed its relationship with Microsoft, saying the new funding and partners announced Friday do not change the terms of that partnership. In a statement, OpenAI said nothing about the funding or the new partners “in any way changes the terms” of its relationship with Microsoft, adding that “The partnership remains strong and central,” according to the company.