Amazon Considers $50 Billion Investment in OpenAI as AI Power Race Accelerates

Amazon Eyes a Historic $50 Billion Bet on OpenAI

Amazon is reportedly in discussions to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, a move that could dramatically reshape the global artificial intelligence landscape and value the AI powerhouse at as much as $830 billion, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

If completed, the deal would rank among the largest private investments in technology history, reinforcing the accelerating race among global tech giants to dominate AI infrastructure, models, and cloud computing capacity.

Inside the Amazon–OpenAI Talks

According to sources familiar with the discussions:

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is leading negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

• A $50 billion investment would make Amazon the largest contributor in OpenAI’s current fundraising round

• The investment would significantly expand OpenAI’s access to Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure

This comes as OpenAI continues to scale its large language models, enterprise AI tools, and compute-intensive platforms like ChatGPT and Sora.

OpenAI’s Rapidly Rising Valuation

OpenAI’s valuation has surged at unprecedented speed:

• 2024: Raised $40 billion in a SoftBank-led round at a $300 billion valuation

• 2025 (current talks): Potential valuation climbs toward $830 billion

• SoftBank may contribute an additional $30 billion, following a $22.5 billion investment made in December outside the prior round

Together, these investments signal that OpenAI is evolving from a research-driven startup into a global AI infrastructure giant.

Why Amazon Wants In—Big

Amazon’s interest in OpenAI aligns tightly with its broader AI and cloud strategy:

Cloud Dominance

• Amazon signed a $38 billion cloud computing deal with OpenAI in November

• AI workloads are increasingly running on AWS, Amazon’s most profitable division

AI Infrastructure Expansion

• AWS generated $33 billion in revenue in Q3 2025, up 20% year-over-year

• Amazon committed:

  • $50 billion to AI infrastructure for U.S. government agencies

  • $20 billion for a massive AI campus in Pennsylvania

Simply put: AI runs on compute, and compute runs on cloud—and Amazon wants to own that pipeline.

Amazon’s AI Hedge: Anthropic and OpenAI

Before engaging deeply with OpenAI, Amazon made significant bets on rival AI firm Anthropic:

• $4 billion invested in September 2023

• Another $4 billion added in November 2024

Rather than choosing a single winner, Amazon appears to be building an AI ecosystem, positioning AWS as the backbone for multiple leading AI models.

What This Means for the Global AI Economy

This potential deal highlights several major global trends:

• AI consolidation among a few trillion-dollar tech giants

• Massive capital flows into data centers, chips, and cloud infrastructure

• AI models becoming strategic national and economic assets

• A shift toward AI-as-infrastructure, not just software

As AI increasingly shapes global productivity, defense, healthcare, finance, and governance, investments of this scale suggest we are entering a new economic era powered by intelligence at scale.

The Bigger Picture

If Amazon proceeds with a $50 billion investment, OpenAI would move closer to becoming one of the most valuable private companies in human history, while Amazon further entrenches itself as the central nervous system of the AI economy.

This is no longer just a tech story—it’s a global power shift.