OpenAI and Amazon sign a $38 billion strategic alliance
The agreement comes at a time when the technology industry is desperately seeking more computing power.
BarcelonaAmazon, through its subsidiary AWS, will provide cloud computing services to OpenAI under a multi-year agreement valued at approximately $38 billion (around €33 billion at the current exchange rate). Thanks to the partnership, the creator of ChatGPT will have access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processors to train and run its artificial intelligence models. The agreement highlights the AI industry's enormous appetite for computing power, driven by the search for technologies capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence. The news has caused Amazon's stock to rise. AWS has extensive experience running large-scale AI infrastructures "securely, reliably, with clusters exceeding 500,000 chips," according to a statement. AWS's leadership in cloud infrastructure, combined with OpenAI's pioneering advancements in generative AI, will help millions of users continue to derive value from ChatGPT, according to the official statement.
The rapid advancement of AI technology has created an unprecedented demand for computing power. As frontier model providers seek to move their models into more advanced intelligence models, they are increasingly turning to AWS because of the performance, scale, and security they can achieve, the Amazon subsidiary emphasizes.
OpenAI will immediately begin using AWS computing as part of this partnership, aiming to deploy full capacity by the end of 2026 and with the ability to expand further into 2027 and beyond.
OpenAI's turn to Amazon—Microsoft's biggest rival and primary backer—marks a turning point in the AI giant's relationship with the Windows maker. It also represents a significant vote of confidence in AWS, following the division's strong quarterly growth reported last week.
The deal is one of OpenAI's first major moves since completing a restructuring last week, freeing the ChatGPT creator to move away from its nonprofit roots. Reuters reported that the company is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could value it at up to $1 trillion. with Microsoft as one of its major shareholders.
