OpenAI Secures $110 Billion From Amazon, NVIDIA And Softbank For A Big AI Expansion

The AI money spigot shows no signs of being turned off any time soon, as OpenAI shared that it has received $110B of investment in a new round of funding. OpenAI says these investments will enable it to meet the demand for its services, and that “providing everyone access to our products requires three things: compute, distribution, and capital.”

This money comes by way of three giants in the AI space, with NVIDIA ponying up $30B, SoftBank providing $30B, and Amazon pitching in $50B, although the partnerships with Amazon and NVIDIA go beyond just capital: OpenAI has signed a strategic partnership with Amazon, alongside an agreement with NVIDIA, to secure the inference compute the company will need to continue its expansion plans.


According to Dave Altavilla, Principal Analyst HotTech Vision & Analysis, the most strategically significant aspect of this new investment and agreement is that OpenAI will now be leveraging Amazon’s AWS-hosted AI infrastructure; specifically, OpenAI is likely targeting the Trainium3 and upcoming Trainium4 silicon. This move diversifies OpenAI's compute supply base once again, including its previous deal with AMD, and it ultimately means less reliance on NVIDIA GPUs to train its foundational models. That helps OpenAI to expand its compute stack and mitigate supplier concentration risk.

It’s highly probable that there will be more announcements of a similar nature in the near future, as the funding round still hasn’t concluded and OpenAI fully expects new financial investors to come calling, especially as it seeks to grow its reach into more markets, and provide its Frontier AI to “more people, more businesses, and more communities worldwide.”

It’s a big move for OpenAI, as it shows that at least some investors are still bullish on AI, and that the rollout for the infrastructure needed to deploy AI is continuing full speed ahead. Unfortunately for everyone else in the technology space, it means that businesses and individuals will have to contend with shortages and potential price increases for the long haul.