Amazon is in talks with OpenAI to potentially invest $50 billion into the artificial intelligence startup, according to The Wall Street Journal, potentially valuing the company as high as $830 billion.
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Key Takeaways
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is spearheading discussions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the Journal reported, adding a $50 billion investment could make Amazon the largest contributor to OpenAI’s ongoing fundraising round.
- OpenAI is nearly a year removed from its latest funding round, a SoftBank-led Series F where it raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation.
- SoftBank could invest an additional $30 billion in OpenAI as part of the current funding round, the Journal reported Wednesday, following a $22.5 billion investment SoftBank made in December separate from the Series F.
- Amazon has done business with OpenAI before, signing a $38 billion cloud computing deal with the startup in November.
Forbes Valuation
Amazon cofounder Jeff Bezos’ estimated net worth dropped to $252.1 billion Thursday. Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg overtook Bezos as the world’s fourth-richest person Thursday after Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for quarterly revenue.
Key Background
Prior to its cloud computing deal with OpenAI, Amazon made multibillion dollar investments in OpenAI rival Anthropic. The ecommerce giant invested $4 billion into Anthropic in September 2023 and an additional $4 billion in November 2024. A large part of Amazon’s AI strategy revolves around getting companies like OpenAI and Anthropic to run workloads on Amazon Web Services. AWS is the company’s most profitable business segment, generating $33 billion in revenue for the third-quarter of 2025, marking a 20% increase year-over-year. Amazon has also invested $50 billion into AI infrastructure for U.S. government agencies and committed to making a $20 billion AI campus in Pennsylvania.
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This story was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
