Amazon is reportedly in talks to invest $50 billion in OpenAI

OpenAI, a company already valued at $500 billion, announced that it is looking for another $100 billion in investment. This funding round could take the company’s valuation to a whopping $830 billion. The Wall Street Journal has now reported that Amazon may contribute at least $50 billion of this record investment.

Not much is known about the potential deal, although the newspaper 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.

In seeking additional funding, OpenAI is also reportedly in discussions with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and the New York Times writes that the startup has held additional talks with Nvidia, Microsoft, and SoftBank. The financing deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter.

Such a partnership between Amazon and OpenAI would be particularly interesting because of Amazon’s close ties with OpenAI competitor Anthropic. Amazon’s AWS is Anthropic’s primary cloud and training provider, and the company has invested at least $8 billion in Anthropic. Amazon also recently opened an $11 billion data center complex in Indiana, designed exclusively to run human models.