OpenAI, a company already valued at $500 billion, said it is seeking an additional $100 billion in investment. This funding round could push the company’s valuation to $830 billion. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Amazon could contribute at least $50 billion of the record investment.
Not much is known about the potential deal, although the Journal notes that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is currently leading negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. TechCrunch has reached out to Amazon and OpenAI for comment.
OpenAI is also known to be in discussions with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East to raise additional funds, and the New York Times reported that the startup has held additional negotiations with NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Softbank. This funding contract is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter.
This partnership between Amazon and OpenAI is particularly interesting because Amazon has a close relationship with OpenAI competitor Anthropic. Amazon’s AWS is Anthropic’s primary cloud and education provider, and the company has invested at least $8 billion in Anthropic. Amazon also recently opened an $11 billion data center campus in Indiana designed to run the Anthropic model exclusively.
