OpenAI in talks with Amazon on a major $10 billion deal

OpenAI is no longer relying on just one major partner.

The startup is in discussions with Amazon about a potential investment that could exceed $10 billion, alongside an agreement to use Amazon’s in-house AI chips.

The talks are confidential and not finalized, but their direction is already clear.

Until recently, OpenAI did not have the latitude to pursue deals like this.

The discussions follow OpenAI’s restructuring in October, when the company formally loosened the terms of its long-standing partnership with Microsoft.

That change gave OpenAI greater freedom to raise capital and work with partners across the AI ecosystem. Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion since 2019, no longer holds a right of first refusal as OpenAI’s compute provider.

That detail matters more than the headline number.

OpenAI is still closely tied to Microsoft, but it is no longer structurally bound to a single infrastructure stack. It can now source compute, capital, and product partnerships independently—and it’s moving quickly to exercise that flexibility.

Amazon fits naturally into that strategy.

AWS has been building its own AI chips for nearly a decade, starting well before the current generative AI boom. Inferentia launched in 2018. Earlier this month, Amazon rolled out the latest generation of Trainium chips, designed specifically for large-scale training workloads.

For OpenAI, those chips represent leverage. More suppliers mean more negotiating power, more redundancy, and less dependence on Nvidia alone.

The competitive context matters. Amazon has already committed at least $8 billion to Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s closest rivals. Microsoft recently announced plans to invest up to $5 billion more in Anthropic, and Nvidia is expected to invest as much as $10 billion.

The hyperscalers are no longer just infrastructure providers. They’re equity participants, chip designers, and strategic backers.

OpenAI sits at the center of that convergence.

In recent months, the company has made more than $1.4 trillion in infrastructure commitments, including agreements with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom. Last month, it signed a deal to purchase $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS—its first formal contract with Amazon’s cloud platform.

Capital has been flowing just as aggressively. In October, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion secondary share sale, allowing employees and former employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.

Taken together, these moves point to a single priority.

OpenAI isn’t trying to choose the best partner. It’s trying to make sure no single partner can dictate its future.