Amazon is reportedly in talks to invest $50B in OpenAI
OpenAI, already a company valued at $500 billionhas announced that he is on the hunt another $100 billion of investments. Such a funding round could result in the company’s valuation skyrocketing to a whopping $830 billion. The Wall Street Journal is here now reporting that Amazon can contribute at least $50 billion of that record-breaking 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 reached out to Amazon and OpenAI for comment.
In its pursuit of additional funding, OpenAI has also reportedly held talks with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and The New York Times has written that the startup has had additional discussions with Nvidia, Microsoft and SoftBank. The financing agreement is expected to close towards the end of Q1.
Such a partnership between Amazon and OpenAI would be particularly interesting due to Amazon’s close ties with OpenAI competitor Anthropic. Amazon’s AWS is the primary cloud and training provider for Anthropic, and the company has done just that invested at least $8 billion in Anthropic. Amazon also recently launched one $11 billion data center campus in Indiana, designed to use Anthropic models exclusively.
