OpenAI announced on Friday it is raising $110 billion in a record funding round that would make the ChatGPT creator worth $840 billion, in an arrangement that reflects the frenzied investment in artificial intelligence.
The funding round involves a $30 billion investment from SoftBank, about $30 billion from Nvidia, opens a new tab, and $50 billion from Amazon, opens new tab, and proceeded AI startup’s estimated mega-IPO later this year.
Big Tech firms and the biggest tech investors like SoftBank are racing to collaborate with OpenAI, which is spending vast amounts on data centers, expecting that closer relationships with the company would offer them a competitive edge in the AI race.
Amazon will begin with its initial capital investment of $15 billion and then continue with another $35 billion in the months to come when specific conditions are fulfilled.
The companies reported that OpenAI and Amazon have also entered a deal alongside the investment, with OpenAI getting access to 2 gigawatts of computing capacity, using Amazon’s in-house Trainium chips.
Amazon’s cloud computing platform, AWS, will be the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier, the ChatGPT maker’s enterprise platform for developing, deploying, and managing AI agents.
The companies stated that the collaboration does not affect the partnership that currently exists between OpenAI and Microsoft, opens a new tab. Microsoft Azure continues to be the only cloud provider of APIs that provide access to OpenAI’s models.
The initial products of OpenAI will still be hosted on Azure, and Microsoft has its exclusive license and access to intellectual property throughout OpenAI models and products.
It was not immediately apparent that Nvidia invested $30 billion in place of its previous commitment, announced in September, according to which Nvidia would invest up to $100 billion in the startup. Thus, OpenAI and Nvidia did not promptly respond to the requests of Reuters for clarification.
