In a move that reflects the frantic pace of artificial intelligence investment, OpenAI said on Friday that it is raising $110 billion in a blockbuster funding round, which would value the ChatGPT maker at $840 billion.
Before the AI startup’s anticipated mega-IPO later this year, the fundraising round comprises $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from Nvidia, and $50 billion from Amazon.
Big Tech firms and investors, including SoftBank, are vying for alliances with OpenAI, which is substantially investing in data centres, in the hopes of gaining a competitive advantage in the AI race.
When certain requirements are fulfilled, Amazon will invest an additional $35 billion in the upcoming months after its first $15 billion commitment.
In addition to the investment, the businesses announced that OpenAI and Amazon have reached an agreement wherein OpenAI will employ two gigawatts of processing power driven by Amazon’s proprietary Trainium chips.
The ChatGPT manufacturer’s corporate platform for creating, deploying, and managing AI agents, OpenAI Frontier, will only use Amazon’s cloud computing platform, AWS, as a third-party cloud provider.
The cooperation does not alter OpenAI’s current connection with Microsoft. Microsoft Azure continues to be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs, which give users access to OpenAI’s models.
Microsoft retains its exclusive license and access to intellectual property related to OpenAI models and products, and OpenAI’s first-party products will remain hosted on Azure.
It was unclear at first if Nvidia’s $30 billion investment superseded its previous September pledge to spend up to $100 billion in the firm.
