SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - OpenAI is in discussions with Amazon (AMZN) over a potential investment and a deal to use the company's artificial intelligence chips, according to CNBC.
People familiar with the matter said the talks are ongoing and subject to change, but the investment could exceed $10 billion. The Information first reported the negotiations.
The discussions follow OpenAI's restructuring completed in October, which clarified the terms of its partnership with Microsoft and gave the AI firm greater flexibility to raise capital and work with a broader range of partners across the AI ecosystem.
Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, no longer holds the right of first refusal to serve as OpenAI's exclusive compute provider. Under the revised structure, OpenAI can also develop certain products with third-party partners.
Amazon has already committed at least $8 billion to Anthropic, a major OpenAI rival, and the talks suggest the company may be seeking deeper exposure to the rapidly expanding generative AI market. Other major players have taken similar steps, with Microsoft recently announcing plans to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic and Nvidia committing up to $10 billion.
Amazon Web Services has been developing its own AI chips for nearly a decade, positioning the hardware as a key offering for AI model training and inference. AWS introduced its Inferentia chips in 2018 and unveiled the latest version of its Trainium chips earlier this month.
OpenAI has made large-scale infrastructure commitments in recent months, signing agreements with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, and securing massive computing capacity. Last month, the company agreed to purchase $38 billion worth of capacity from AWS, marking its first major contract with the cloud provider.
Separately, OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion secondary share sale in October, allowing current and former employees to sell shares at a valuation of about $500 billion.
On Wednesday, Amazon closed at $221.27, down 0.58%, and is currently trading after hours at $221.76, up 0.22%, on the NasdaqGS.
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