OpenAI, already valued at $500 billion, has announced it is seeking an additional $100 billion in investment. Such a funding round could boost the company’s valuation to a whopping $830 billion. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Amazon could contribute at least $50 billion of its record investment.
Not much is known about this potential deal, but the magazine 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 search of additional funding, OpenAI is also reportedly in talks with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, and The New York Times notes that OpenAI has held additional talks with Nvidia, Microsoft, and SoftBank. The financing agreement is expected to close by the end of the first quarter.
Such a partnership between Amazon and OpenAI would be particularly interesting due to Amazon’s close relationship with OpenAI’s 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 recently opened an $11 billion data center campus in Indiana designed to run only the Anthropic model.
