Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is in talks with Sam Altman to close an investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI. He has revealed it The Wall Street Journal and has confirmed it CNBC referring to his own sources.
The deal could close in a matter of weeks as part of a record $100 billion funding round that would skyrocket OpenAI’s valuation to $830 billion. Today there are only fourteen listed companies in the world with a higher valuation. And none among the unlisted ones.
Why is it important. Amazon would become the largest investor in the round, surpassing the 30 billion negotiated by another old acquaintance of technological mega-investments, SoftBank. And it does so just two months after OpenAI reached a valuation of half a billion dollars.
Between the lines. Amazon has an important alliance with Anthropic from 2023that is, with the direct rival of OpenAI. AWS is its primary cloud provider, and in October inaugurated an 11 billion data center campus exclusively for Anthropic in Indiana.
Betting at the same time on two companies that are so competitive with each other sounds like a paradox, but it is not so much if we think of Amazon as one of the sellers of picks and shovels in the AI gold rush. They don’t care who finds the nuggets because they charge for the tools.
The money trail. In addition to Amazon’s 50 billion, NVIDIA is negotiating to invest 20 billion and Microsoft “several billion more.” The three companies sell OpenAI just what it needs to exist: chips and computing capacity in data centers.
Yes, but. This circular scheme is not going unnoticed and has raised more than one eyebrow:
Amazon basically ensures itself many years of guaranteed income (at least as long as OpenAI does not go bankrupt, something no one can afford) while diversifying risks by also betting on Anthropic. Just in case.
In detail. Although nothing has been leaked that could take it for granted, this investment could perfectly include clauses for OpenAI to adopt the AWS own chips. Or that Amazon sells ChatGPT Enterprise subscriptions to its enterprise customers. It will be through parallel business channels.
OpenAI has insane costs with the dark clouds caused by the arrival of Gemini 3 and its great reception. So they are considering ways to sustain capital-devouring growth, such as the much-rumored IPO.
The context. a few days ago, Amazon announced the layoff of 16,000 employees “office”, not warehouse or logistics. It is their second round of layoffs for them after 14,000 in October. In total, 30,000 casualties. Meanwhile, it has projected investments that already total 125 billion by 2026 in data centers alone. There is no other large technology company with such a high spending projection.
It is a contradiction that has an overwhelming logic: if with AI you are going to be able to do more with fewer jobs, you choose to cut salaries to allocate them to investment.
Go deeper. This movement is another nail in the… pattern: big technology companies no longer compete so much to develop the best AI but to control the infrastructure that supports it. Whoever has control of data centers and chips will have control of the business. Regardless of which chatbot succeeds.
Featured image | Dima Solomin
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