Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon in Talks to Invest Up to $60 Billion in OpenAI
The Takeaway
- Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft are in talks to invest up to $60 billion in OpenAI
- Investment from Amazon could depend on separate cloud, ChatGPT deals
- Funding would widen gap with rival Anthropic
OpenAI is lining up huge checks from some of its biggest tech partners, as it seeks to raise up to $100 billion to fund growing demand for its AI. Nvidia, an existing investor whose chips power OpenAI’s AI models, is in talks to invest up to $30 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
Microsoft, a longstanding backer with exclusive rights to sell OpenAI models to cloud customers, is in talks to invest less than $10 billion. And Amazon, which would be a new investor, is also in talks to invest significantly more than $10 billion, potentially even more than $20 billion.
These investments would be in addition to existing investor SoftBank, which is also in talks to invest up to $30 billion, said two people with knowledge of the situation.
If this extraordinary funding round comes together, it would calm investors worried about the company’s cash burn. Public market investors have lately grown skeptical about OpenAI’s ability to fulfill its spending commitments to Oracle and Microsoft.
The new round could value the company at $730 billion before the financing.
The involvement by the tech giants would give OpenAI vastly more resources to pay to run and train its AI models as well as spend on other compute costs, which it estimated last summer could amount to more than$430 billion between 2026 and 2030, burning nearly $70 billion in the process. It would also significantly widen the funding gap with Anthropic, which has projected its revenue could surpass OpenAI’s in 2029.
It’s not clear which investor will pour the most money in OpenAI’s latest round.
OpenAI is close to receiving term sheets, or an investment commitment from these firms, according to the people. The round is not finalized and institutional investors besides SoftBank are also likely to eventually participate, said one of the people.
The amount that Amazon invests could depend on separate deals the two companies are negotiating, including potentially an expansion of OpenAI’s cloud server rental deal with Amazon, as well as a commercial deal for OpenAI to sell its products, such as enterprise ChatGPT subscriptions, to Amazon.
OpenAI in November said it would spend $38 billion renting servers from AWS over the next seven years, making AWS one of at least five cloud providers OpenAI uses to develop its AI.
Nvidia last fall committed to investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI, which would be spread over multiple years over tranches of $10 billion, as OpenAI deploys gigawatts of chips. However, that deal is still not finalized and would be separate from Nvidia’s discussions to invest in OpenAI’s current round, said one of the people.